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                                                                                Name Me


The power of naming is at least two-fold: naming defines the quality and value of that which is named—and it also denies reality and value to that which is never named, never uttered. That which has no name, that for which we have no words or concepts, is rendered mute and invisible: powerless to inform or transform our consciousness or our experience, our understanding, our vision; powerless to claim its own existence. . . . This has been the situation of women in our world.

—B. Du Bois, as quoted in Convicted Survivors: The Imprisonment of Battered Women Who Kill, by Elizabeth Dermody Leonard


                                                             Name me the girl
                                                             with the slate-blue eyes,
                                                             the girl who sits under the apple tree,
                                                             your apple-cheeked bride.

                                                             Name me your lover—

                                                             the mother of your eight-pound baby boy.

                                                             Name me sugar lips.
                                                             Name me honey-girl.
                                                             Name me sweet potato pie.

                                                             Name me the woman
                                                             with the black-and-blue eye.

                                                             Name me white roses.
                                                             Name me I swear, baby.

                                                             Name me crushed larynx.
                                                             Name me fractured mandible.
                                                             Name me but I was high, baby;
                                                             it don’t count when you’re high.

                                                             Name me whore.
                                                             Name me get in that fuckin’ kitchen,
                                                             bitch.

                                                             Name me dislocated shoulder.
                                                             Name me what ya gonna do,
                                                             have me arrested?
 
                                                             Name me I dare you
                                                             to try and leave me.

                                                             Name me the woman
                                                             with seven broken toes.

                                                             Name me the cunt
                                                             you tell not to make
                                                             a sound.

                                                             Name me tramp, slut, ugly
                                                             ball and chain.

                                                             Name me the woman you love

                                                             to get up against the wall
                                                             and fuck with your .38.

                                                             Name me the woman
                                                             who found the dog
                                                             lying in a pool of blood
                                                             outside our daughter’s door.

                                                             Name me the one who dug
                                                             the dog’s grave; posted LOST signs
                                                             the next day with our kids.

                                                             Name me the mother of children
                                                             who will never be safe.

                                                             Name me sleepless.
                                                             Name me the little missus
                                                             who bought a 9-millimeter.

                                                             Name me shows no remorse,
                                                             name me guilty as charged.

                                                             Name me not sorry.

                                                             Name me widow.
                                                             Name me the woman in cell C-15.

                                                             Name me free.

Select Publications

“Variation on the Words Sleep Related Eating Disorder,” “Bough Down,” “the why of it,” “After Jury Duty (How do I love thee?),” & “After the Verdict,” LAdige Review; California Poets: Part VII, July 1, 2024

“Wish You Were Here from Beneath Seven Full Moons,” August 2017, Split Lip Magazine

“Sacrifice,” Arsenic Lobster Poetry Journal, Issue 23, 2010

“1960, Just Married, Three Months Pregnant,” Tattoo Highway TH/19, 2009

“Heaven, 1963,” American Life in Poetry, #120, July 18, 2007