i check for a name’s availability so i don’t
violate the business’ trademark. God is taken
but i can be devil. you devil, my wife says
when i try on her mascara & wear her bra
to see how much of a woman i can translate
into. i dance to the harvest of happiness.
even when there is no need, i find myself
useful, check the names the ground feigns
it is unaware of, names which recently
have become available for use: my father’s.
the young boy who never came home
from school. crushed paper of a likely story.
to be young is to have today & even
tomorrow. i tell my sister when you name
your son, give him the one which doesn’t
die without love. a name stops working
if it’s called in a surrounding outside
its design envelope. name him Home
so he’ll remember the practice of returning.
or at least when they are reconstructing
the scene prior to his becoming a mishap
of a person, they’ll use the right inventory
to trace out his toe. name him an acronym
from the missing infants’ names. never mind
the name i find. the sell in a name is
those dots that keep competitors guessing.
Seun Fakoyede is a Nigerian writer and School Teacher whose work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Sand Magazine, Going Down Swinging (Pigeonholed), Slice Magazine, Bacopa Literary Review, Third Point Press, Stoneboat and Vinyl Poetry.