<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>N'em</div><div><br></div><div>They said to say goodnight </div><div>And not goodbye, unplugged</div><div>The TV when it rained. They hid</div><div>Money in mattresses</div><div>So to sleep on decisions.</div><div>Some of their children</div><div>Were not their children. Some</div><div>Of their parents had no birthdates.</div><div>They could sweat a cold out</div><div>Of you. They'd wake without</div><div>An alarm telling them to.</div><div>Even the short ones reached</div><div>Certain shelves. Even the skinny</div><div>Cooked animals too quick</div><div>To catch. And I don't care </div><div>How ugly one of them arrived,</div><div>That one got married</div><div>To somebody fine. They fed </div><div>Families with change and wiped</div><div>Their kitchens clean.</div><div>Then another century came.</div><div>People like me forgot their names.</div><div><br></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Jericho Brown</div><div><br></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>(<i>The colloquialism of the title, which means "and them"—as in "Tell your mama and 'em I said hello—encompasses a host of <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>people made familiar by the world of the poem. Most of us have known them: elders and distant ancestors whose way of being <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>was rooted in the wisdom of folk knowledge, a generation now all but gone.)</i></div><div><br></div></body></html>