Poetry |

“Say Their Names”

Say Their Names

 

“How many times do I have to kill before I get a name in the paper?” complained a murderer in a letter to the Wichita police (1978)

— in Leo Braudy’s The Frenzy of Renown

 

1.

 

The murderer’s delusion wasn’t new.

People have been obsessed with getting their names widely known for centuries.

A friend of a friend of Cicero in fact wrote a book called

On Persons of the Same Name

on how not to let some random name-mate

 

claim your fame.

 

 

2.

 

Sometimes we deny a name to those

we wish did not exist

as FDR was

“That Man in the White House” to the rich.

“I did not have sex with That Woman,” Clinton forcefully declared

 

— although now we can’t forget her name

because we know he did.

The scandal was named after me, said Monica –

now beautiful and nearing 50 –

 

so after grad school I couldn’t get a job. “Monica Lewinsky” was

fat-shamed, slut-shamed, rapped-on for decades

and still is. People suggested she change her name,

but she thought not. No one suggested he change his,

she gently pointed out. At which the audience exploded.

 

 

3.

 

We do sometimes use as shorthand, though.

“George Floyd” these days is shorthand for “systemic racism”

while “George Washington” stands (or used to stand)

for “public rectitude.” The best thing that George ever did

was yield when his time was up

 

which is the hallmark of democracy,

now threatened. So one hates to mention it, but, um …

now we learn that on his deathbed, Mr. Founder

couldn’t stop stalking a woman who’d escaped him

 

whom he thought he owned. Statues coming down,

heroes unhorsed, genocidal inclinations uncovered

in heretofore-admired explorers …

 

“Say his name!” shouts the speaker, and

the crowd roars back “GEORGE FLOYD!”

The woman our Founder couldn’t stop chasing

was Ona Judge Staines.

Say her name.

 

 

4.

 

George Floyd didn’t know his killer’s name.

He called him “Mr. Officer” and also “man”

alternately appealing to their common humanity

and signaling his harmlessness with a double honorific.

 

Please, Mr. Officer, he begged

can you just not shoot me, man?  Please, please, please

I’m so sorry

I didn’t know.

 

Daniel Pantaleo killed Eric Garner

(I wouldn’t do nothing to hurt you, Mr. Officer.)

Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison and Myles Cosgrove shot Breonna Taylor

(I’m scared as fuck, man)

Jeronimo Yanez killed Philando Castile

(My face is gone)

Timothy Loehmann killed Timir Rice

(Why this going on like this?)

Aaron Dean killed Alatiana Jefferson

(I can’t breathe, Mr. Officer!  Please!)

David Reid killed Aura Rosser …

 

You’re going to kill me, man,

George Floyd told his murderer.

Then stop talking, Derek Chauvin said.

It takes a lot of oxygen to talk.

 

Now everyone knows his name.

Contributor
Linda Bamber

Linda Bamber is a fiction writer, poet, essayist, and Professor of English at Tufts University. Her recent fiction collection, Taking What I Like and her poetry collection, Metropolitan Tang were published by David R. Godine, Publisher. Widely reprinted and anthologized, her critical book on Shakespeare, Comic Women, Tragic Men: Gender and Genre in Shakespeare, was published by Stanford University Press. She is currently writing a novella based on the cross-country expedition of Lewis and Clark.

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