National Poetry Month - #3

Names are funny things. Typically we have no say in what ours is and yet they become such a part of our identity. I have not yet been placed in a situation where I have to name another human being, and to be honest, the prospect frightens me a little bit. Such responsibility. I don't know if I could even name a dog if I got one.

I, however, love my name. People get it wrong a lot of the time {which I have talked about previously}, but I still like it. I know there are people who really dislike their name and that there are lots of people who are just ambivalent about it. I find it a very interesting topic.

So, for today's poem, I share one that's new to me by Patricia Smith. She brillantly illustrates the contrast between her given name and the wished-for one from her dad. Really solid - love it. Please pardon the bit of swearing at the end.

Does this prompt you to share any thoughts on your name?

Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah
by Patricia Smith

My mother scraped the name Patricia Ann from the ruins

of her discarded Delta, thinking it would offer me shield
and shelter, that leering men would skulk away at the slap
of it. Her hands on the hips of Alabama, she went for flat
and functional, then siphoned each syllable of drama,
repeatedly crushing it with her broad, practical tongue
until it sounded like an instruction to God and not a name.
She wanted a child of pressed head and knocking knees,
a trip-up in the doubledutch swing, a starched pinafore
and peppermint-in-the-sour pickle kinda child, stiff-laced
and unshakably fixed on salvation. Her Patricia Ann
would never idly throat the Lord’s name or wear one
of those thin, sparkled skirts that flirted with her knees.
She'd be a nurse or a third-grade teacher or a postal drone,

jobs requiring alarm clock discipline and sensible shoes.

My four downbeats were music enough for a vapid life
of butcher shop sawdust and fatback as cuisine, for Raid
spritzed into the writhing pockets of a Murphy bed.
No crinkled consonants or muted hiss would summon me.

My daddy detested borders. One look at my mother's

watery belly, and he insisted, as much as he could insist
with her, on the name Jimi Savannah, seeking to bless me
with the blues-bathed moniker of a ball breaker, the name
of a grown gal in a snug red sheath and unlaced All-Stars.
He wanted to shoot muscle through whatever I was called,
arm each syllable with tiny weaponry so no one would
mistake me for anything other than a tricky whisperer
with a switchblade in my shoe. I was bound to be all legs,
a bladed debutante hooked on Lucky Strikes and sugar.
When I sent up prayers, God's boy would giggle and consider.

Daddy didn't want me to be anybody's sure-fire factory,
nobody's callback or seized rhythm, so he conjured
a name so odd and hot even a boy could claim it. And yes,
he was prepared for the look my mother gave him when
he first mouthed his choice, the look that said, That's it,
you done lost your goddamned mind. She did that thing
she does where she grows two full inches with righteous,
and he decided to just whisper Love you, Jimi Savannah
whenever we were alone, re- and rechristening me the seed
of Otis, conjuring his own religion and naming it me.