The Art of Naming

Once a woman loved her daughter so much, she yearned to give her a name that encompassed the world. She endowed the infant with name upon name, first names, middle names, a multiply hyphenated last name. Each name in her language had meaning: birds, beasts, plants, the earth, the sky, the divine spirit, the demi-gods, love, carnal satisfaction, joy, tears, death, rebirth, and more. When the woman had exhausted her language, she felt she still had not fully designated all of her love and began to invent new words, new names. She is doing this still. Perhaps, when she is finished, the world will end and the divine one will descend from a crack in the sky. Perhaps the divine one will be the woman’s daughter, fully grown, ready to fill the world with love. Perhaps the daughter, swelling with anger at all the injustice in the world, as catalogued in her infinite names, will be an avenging devil strewing fire, plague, torture, and death. Most likely, she has already begun.

Ethan Goffman’s first volume of poetry, Words for Things Left Unsaid, was published by Kelsay Books in March of 2020. His poems and flash fiction have appeared in Alien Buddha, Ariel Chart, BlazeVox, Bradlaugh’s Finger, Burgeon, EarthTalk, The Loch Raven Review, Mad Swirl, Madness Muse, Ramingo’s Blog, The Raw Art Review, Setu, Verse Virtual and elsewhere. Ethan is co-founder of It Takes a Community, a Montgomery College initiative bringing poetry to students and local residents. He is also founder and producer of the Poetry & Planet podcast on EarthTalk.org.