Catechism

What is your Name?
Who gave you this Name?
What did your Godfathers and Godmothers then for you?

I come from a place with beech in its name;
my name then was wished for, dropped
from the mouth of an old woman, fat
as a grandmother, soft, round as an egg.

Conceived in the eye of a sad man,
I was born at the trip of a young woman’s
foot, a tumble that rushed me, unready
to air, light, gravity’s chill.

I was nourished on milk from the tip
of a spoon, sugar-sweet, thickened
with bread; and crucible tops from soft-
boiled eggs, made yellow, salty with butter.

I grew fat, white as a grub, gurgled,
babbled, spoke, settled for serious talk.
Loquacious, prodigious, I figured the world
in my mouth, made language a loose tooth

to push with my tongue - cylinder, Hollander,
colander, kiosk, - I rolled it around,
five years without stopping for breath.
I gorged on its sweet, salt, bitter, sour,

sucked hard on it, bloodied the roof
of my mouth with its acid. I come from
the quiet of a coy girl, dark-eyed, slim
at the waist, a girl in a green dress,

whose name then was chosen by men,
who taught her to lower her eyes, press
her lips, narrow her throat, swallow words
down; who taught me the power of hush, hush, hush.

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