Jericho Brown

INDEPENDENCE

I am not your Thomas Jefferson.
I am not your Thomas Jefferson.
I am not your Thomas Jefferson.
I am not your Thomas Jefferson.

I am not your Thomas Jefferson.
I am not your Thomas Jefferson.
I am not your Thomas Jefferson.
I am not your Thomas Jefferson.

I am not your Thomas Jefferson.
I am not your Thomas Jefferson.
I am not your Thomas Jefferson.
I am not your Thomas Jefferson.

Watch me fuck up your architecture
just as I built Monticello with my hands.

JERICHO BROWN has published poems in The New Republic, The New Yorker, and The Best American Poetry. His first book, Please, won the American Book Award, and his second book, The New Testament, won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and the Thom Gunn Award, and it was named one of the best books of the year by Library Journal, Coldfront, and the Academy of American Poets. He is an associate professor of English and creative writing at Emory University in Atlanta.