Three poems: A hard name, Chameleons, Damaged

Featured in

  • Published 20180501
  • ISBN: 9781925603323
  • Extent: 264pp
  • Paperback (234 x 153mm), eBook

A hard name

There were reds under the beds
when we were growing up
and someone at school
always ridiculed my name
the name of the woman spy
frozen in a cold war movie.
It has been a hard name to carry
a hard name to explain
but sometimes it starred in a ballet
and took the impossible leap
or came up in Dostoevsky
only to fall in quiet despair
softly at our feet.
I lived with it then
I live with it now.
It keeps its hard edge
in the language my parents
never quite mastered.

Already a subscriber? Sign in here

If you are an educator or student wishing to access content for study purposes please contact us at griffithreview@griffith.edu.au

Share article

More from author

Shape-shift

PoetryIn the light that steals across dead valleys like a shallow wave anything that lives has lost its solid presence the shape of life bleeds out...

More from this edition

Debt in paradise

ReportageANNIE TRIED TO leave. She had no cash, just a car full of possessions. She’d worked full-time for four weeks with not a cent...

Citizenship elegy

EssayFOR A MOMENT, as my plane finally descended into Canberra at the end of the long trip from Germany, I thought it must be making an...

The stories we don’t tell

MemoirEVERY MORNING I would press my nose against the glass and try to imagine what this place could be. A bare room with white walls...

Stay up to date with the latest, news, articles and special offers from Griffith Review.