Poem for Monday, May 12, 2008 (published by Burke's
Bookstore)
Names
by Lyn Lifshin
Lately I become
whatever you call
me, the way some
Indians do. First
I couldn’t say
your because
it belonged to
someone who’d
turned me into
who I wasn’t.
When you called
me love near the
rag shop on Caroline,
I tried to remember
the spell Iroquois
put on names to
make them stay.