Giving Myself Up

/ Issue 12.2 /

I am tired of having a name.
Every time I wake
it grinds its teeth
like the gears of a moving van
and it smells of soot,
like the sweat of being a man,
and it weighs like a stone
I carry for no one’s sake.

In the courthouse it echoes
down the long corridors
and it creaks in the bedsprings
of cheap rooms and it croons in bars;
it whistles up to the gaps
between the stars
and down to the truck stop
bathroom’s piss-stained floors.

I have betrayed it to the dark
when there was no one to blame
and whispered it seductively
into the ear of danger.
But I am tired and I want
to be done with it for good.

I will give it up. I will answer
to nothing. I will be
a stranger. I will put on the silence
like an executioner’s hood.
Here it is, poor neck
squirming on the block: my name.

Morri Creech

Morri Creech

Morri Creech is the author of four collections of poetry, including The Sleep of Reason (Waywiser 2013) and Blue Rooms (Waywiser 2018). He has new work appearing in Antioch Review, Yale Review, The New Criterion, and elsewhere. He lives in Charlotte, NC.
Morri Creech

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Author: Morri Creech

Morri Creech is the author of four collections of poetry, including The Sleep of Reason (Waywiser 2013) and Blue Rooms (Waywiser 2018). He has new work appearing in Antioch Review, Yale Review, The New Criterion, and elsewhere. He lives in Charlotte, NC.