Grievance
Morri Creech
I am tired of having a name.Every time I wakeit grinds its teethlike the gears of a moving van,and it smells of soot,like the sweat of being a man,and it weighs like a stoneI carry for no one's sake.In the courthouse it echoesdown the long corridors,and it creaks in the bedspringsof cheap rooms, and it croons in bars;it whistles up to the gapsbetween the starsand down to the truck stopbathroom's piss-stained floors.I have betrayed it to the darkwhen there was no one to blameand whispered it seductivelyinto the ear of danger.But I am tired, and I wantto be done with it for good.I will give it up. I will answerto nothing. I will bea stranger. I will put on the silencelike an executioner's hood.Here it is, poor necksquirming on the block: my name.