Because My Name is Alan
after Jericho Brown, for Tosin (Ayisat)
BY ALAN KING
Would you believe if I told you
I love a woman named
for how the living greet each other
when asked,
"how you doing?" Or that the meaning
of what I’m called neither makes me
an angel or the capital
of Arkansas? I’m just a man
who moves from one mirage
to the next.
How she knows where I’ve been,
only the gods know. Some nights,
she makes a continent
of my body, pointing out her country
my spine runs through
like the Niger River. How her hands
play along me
either makes me a soprano
sax or a trombone
with a slide. The way she calls me,
sometimes, she could either be
singing a favorite song or renaming
what the stars spell out.
BY ALAN KING
Would you believe if I told you
I love a woman named
for how the living greet each other
when asked,
"how you doing?" Or that the meaning
of what I’m called neither makes me
an angel or the capital
of Arkansas? I’m just a man
who moves from one mirage
to the next.
How she knows where I’ve been,
only the gods know. Some nights,
she makes a continent
of my body, pointing out her country
my spine runs through
like the Niger River. How her hands
play along me
either makes me a soprano
sax or a trombone
with a slide. The way she calls me,
sometimes, she could either be
singing a favorite song or renaming
what the stars spell out.
ALAN KING’S poems have appeared in Alehouse, Audience, Boxcar Poetry Review, Indiana Review, MiPoesias, and RATTLE, among others. A Cave Canem fellow and VONA Alum, he’s been nominated for both a Best of the Net selection and Pushcart Prize. When he’s not reporting or sending poems to journals, you can find Alan chasing the muse through Washington, D.C. — people watching with his boys and laughing at the crazy things strangers say to get close to one another.
