• Home
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Links
  • MER Journal
    • Latest Issue
    • Back Issues
    • Subscribe to MER!
  • MER Online
    • MER Quarterly
    • MER Literary Folios
    • Poetry
    • Fiction
    • Creative Prose
    • Essay
    • Interviews
    • Book Reviews
    • Craft
      • Authors’ Notes
    • Art Gallery
      • Special – Hybrids
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Events
      • MER 18 Virtual Reading – Voices From HOME
    • Currents
      • Announcements
      • Highlights
  • Shop
    • All Issues
    • One Year Subscription
    • Two Year Subscription
  • Submit
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
MER – Mom Egg Review
  • Home
    • About
    • Masthead
    • Links
  • MER Journal
    • Latest Issue
    • Back Issues
    • Subscribe to MER!
  • MER Online
    • MER Quarterly
    • MER Literary Folios
    • Poetry
    • Fiction
    • Creative Prose
    • Essay
    • Interviews
    • Book Reviews
    • Craft
      • Authors’ Notes
    • Art Gallery
      • Special – Hybrids
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Events
      • MER 18 Virtual Reading – Voices From HOME
    • Currents
      • Announcements
      • Highlights
  • Shop
    • All Issues
    • One Year Subscription
    • Two Year Subscription
  • Submit
MER – Mom Egg Review
You are at:Home»MER VOX»Poetry»Make a Name by Shoshana Sarah

Make a Name by Shoshana Sarah

0
By Mom Egg Review on September 11, 2016 Poetry, Ruben Free and Mosley - Stretch Marks

Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” Genesis 11:4

 

Babiliu to Babel
They knew that making gathers.
They knew the power of a name,
and they wanted one—
but we see what that got them.

Scattered and confused,
now each glyph, utterance & way
of hearing sound is dispersed
across the earth.

African-American
Transatlantically scattered through the
Middle Passage, confused,
mixed up, sold and reduced
to the one drop rule.

No language, no name, no city:
Just two whole continents— neither
exactly our own, neither completely
home—
stretched so far as if to literally say
you are neither here nor there.

Surname (Slave names)
Maiden name, father’s name,
mother’s name, ex-husband’s
name— there is no family line or
occupation
in this— it is an anti-inheritance.

So I ask myself, what difference
does it make if I take his name?

Namesake
Shoshana is a Jewish name— though I am
not; it means rose. Or so I thought until
I learned it actually means lily— or both,
or more. Even scholars aren’t sure.
Mistranslated, it is the only thing that is
mine.

Maktub
Some believe in a hand that has
written our stories before we were born.
I don’t know about that
but this is what I do know:
I did not choose this name,
this tongue, this pen, or the love of
making—

Abracadabra
and yet: incantations, magic words,
the glamour of grammar— call it
what you want— but that’s what
happened.

Eunoia
I chose my daughters’ names carefully
(1)”beauty”/”splendor”/”glory;”
(2)”teacher”/”preacher”/”gatherer;”
(3)”people of god”/”a high place.”

Each time I was renaming myself.

 


Shoshana SarahShoshana Sarah is a multidisciplinary artist, American-born, based in Jerusalem. Creator of Poets of Babel, a multilingual poetry club, she explores hybrid and multi-local identity through poetry/spoken word, lyric essay, and performance. She belly dances, teaches writing, and has completed The Shaindy Rudoff Creative Writing Graduate Program. She is obsessed with maps, clocks, compasses, lampposts, and the Tower of Babel while simultaneously having issues with time, directions, and a proud case of “Jerusalem Syndrome.” Her works appear in The Ilanot Review, Yes Poetry,מרחבالفضاء Space, Entropy, Duende, Arc, and “Let’s Get Lit.”

Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
Previous ArticleGetting It Right: Lore Segal in Conversation With Laura Geringer Bass
Next Article Mother by Batnadiv HaKarmi Weinberg

Comments are closed.

September 29, 2023

Featured Fiction: Death of the Water Bug by Lore Segal

September 29, 2023

Poem of the Month – October 2023

September 29, 2023

Good Grief, the Ground by Margaret Ray

September 28, 2023

The Wounds That Bind Us by Kelley Shinn

September 28, 2023

Book of Gods & Grudges by Jessica L. Walsh

September 22, 2023

MER Bookshelf – October 2023

September 14, 2023

MER Online Quarterly – September 2023

September 14, 2023

Food as Nourishment and Metaphor – Poetry Folio

September 14, 2023

Jen Karetnick – Poetry

September 14, 2023

Raeshell Sweeting – Poetry

Copyright © 2022 MER and Mom Egg Review
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Submit
  • Contact

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.