Names.

Makalani, Minkah

Mama picked them from a loam of dead relatives, resurrections. One kick & she named Ned after Paw-paw. Claimed she smelled his pipe in her dreams. Sheila Marie after an aunt who passed the week she was born. Margaret Louise for two grandmothers. But as if simple appellations to place next to Weight & Length, mama, three weeks after color set in, gave nicknames. Most were shortened first names or pairs of initials. Shape & action doled the rest. My brother's head fit like a doorknob in her hand. Knobby. The "K" left off his headstone. Ioda stuck her month-old hand in the sugar & licked it clean; named her Ginger Bread, Ginger sticking thirty years now. Each name fills us with a heft of folklore. Bucket. Quick. Monchie. Turkey Legs. Their mystery bold on our tongues, ancestral scars insisting on our redemption.

minkah makalani is a senior in history at the University of Missouri at Columbia. His poems have appeared in Obsidian II, Eyeball, and Testimony: Young African-Americans on Self- Discovery and Black Identity.

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