Jericho Brown

#JerichoBrown (April 14, 1976 – ): Born and raised in Shreveport, Louisiana, Brown graduated from #DillardUniversity, then the #UniversityOfNewOrleans with an MFA and the #UniversityOfHouston with a PhD. He is currently an associate professor of English and the director of the Creative Writing Program at #EmoryUniversity and serves as Assistant Editor at #Callaloo, a quarterly literary magazine that publishes works on the African diaspora and is considered to be the longest running African American literary magazine. He published his first book, #Please, in 2008, which won the American Book Award, and in 2011 received the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry. He released his second book (one of poetry), called #TheNewTestament, which won the 2015 Ansfield-Wolf Book Award. His third book, a collection of poems entitled #TheTradition, came out in 2019 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. In his poem “Bullet Points,” he speaks to frustration with police brutality, saying “I will not shoot myselfIn the head, and I will not shoot myself
In the back, and I will not hang myself
With a trash bag, and if I do, 
I promise you, I will not do it
In a police car while handcuffed
Or in the jail cell of a town
I only know the name of
Because I have to drive through it
To get home. Yes, I may be at risk,
But I promise you, I trust the maggots
Who live beneath the floorboards
Of my house to do what they must
To any carcass more than I trust
An officer of the law of the land
To shut my eyes like a man
Of God might, or to cover me with a sheet
So clean my mother could have used it
To tuck me in. When I kill me, I will
Do it the same way most Americans do, 
I promise you: cigarette smoke
Or a piece of meat on which I choke
Or so broke I freeze 
In one of these winters we keep
Calling worst. I promise if you hear
Of me dead anywhere near
A cop, then that cop killed me. He took 
Me from us and left my body, which is, 
No matter what we’ve been taught, 
Greater than the settlement
A city can pay a mother to stop crying,
And more beautiful than the new bullet
Fished from the folds of my brain.” #PrideMonth #LGBTQIA #LGBTQIAPride #Pride #LegendsOfPride #YouCannotEraseUs