Daria-Ann Martineau
eau – that my name is fluid as French:
Creole Sea-Captain in it, businessman
who charged the village
five cents each for his running water.
It’s the “no”
at the end: the young lawyer who left politics,
the woman who drowned her family in his—
Why should I relinquish that
to Butler? Sans Mar-
tineau? There’s safety in servitude: without
art of war,
no
coup d’etat that mars
our marital state.
One but too many in taking your name.
Clark Gable’s Rhett can offer me nothing
of my ancestors
who carried contraband.
I want to smuggle that story in like a calypso, like a code-song
for leaving the South.
I know full well
this place of yours. If I must belong to you
I’d rather not hear it in my name.