It was not until I rescued a cat and named her Pidgin
that I truly began to wonder whether we all grow into the names we are given.
Though hers is an homage to the muddled languages of her tortoise-shell fur,
she can’t possibly hear the difference in spelling.
Pidge spends hours staring out the window of our studio
at the real pigeons. She does not seem to want to hurt them, but melodically coos
stories of their foibles to me when I come home. Pidge absconds with mouth-fulls
of my dinner each night. She may think I expect this of her.
I do not give away my real name lightly. My surname
betrays my heritage to listeners without my consent, which is also the core
of the name Dinah, that lack of consent, the voiceless sister whose rape
allowed the Israelites to make war with a clear conscience.
But then we are all named without consent, all names are given.
Perhaps I grew into the habit of correcting mispronunciations, of relative
quiet, of serving as a justification for the actions of my relatives.
Perhaps I know I am expected to be a very good sister.
The naming of things has always seemed a weighty task;
names are worn for so long and used so often. But this added burden
makes the responsibility unbearable, for who am I to bestow on anything
a history that must be grown into?
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This is really great. I kind of want pidgin to come back at the end somehow. Right now the poem is very linear in its logic leading right up to that killer last line. I don't know why but I want it to be a bit more of a cycle. I think what I am trying to say is that currently it hops. It is like you start on one stone with stanzas one and two (pidgin), then hop to stanzas three through five. One and two blend nicely, and three through five bland nicely, but the jump from pidgin to you seems very sudden. I hope that helps and isn't too much jibberish.
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