Naming Ceremony
Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
for Jerry Ward, Jr.
Shallow curve of the land
between master and owned
I have dismissed you until I come
upon kin Since time my jaws
have collected accusations
from memory No logic
grinding my teeth I have not
been sold The telling of the coppers
between fingers (Skin)
I think that I have known freedom
This old story and yet I grieve
accented by our home
Your line reaching back
while I search for the cloth
of our mother’s bodice
My line snapped My mind
flying home at Ibo Landing
I think that I have known liberty in
the caverns I have lived in
Valley of Senegambia
Coast of Slaves Gold Ivory
(Loss) The mud of the Bights
Benin Listen to the talk
beaten by a man and his apprentice
a mortgaged youth My body
lightened mongreled currency
Biafra beaten Hear me
beaten down blood free
unclaimed by garbled deity
My father’s call tricks
the music of stopped ears
The flesh of the young men is burning
One of us is Cain the gardener
of perfidy unblessed by lineage
the flesh of the young men is aglow
About this poem
“In West African societies, the naming ritual is essential to the identity of a child, connecting her to the culture in which she was born. In this poem, the speaker grieves her lost African name, one that might have been given to her, if her ancestors had not been slaves. The geographical locations – Benin, Biafra, etc. – represent some of the busiest slave ports, the ‘points of no return’ for the estimated 15 million kidnapped Africans who were taken from their homelands, sold as slaves and then forced to travel the Middle Passage. The italicized lines in the poem are taken from Lance Jeffers’ poem ‘The Flesh of the Young Men is Burning.'” – Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
About Honoree Fanonne Jeffers
Honoree Fanonne Jeffers is the author of “The Glory Gets” (Wesleyan University Press, 2015). She is an associate professor of English at the University of Oklahoma and lives in Norman, Okla.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
(c) 2015 Honoree Fanonne Jeffers. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
