My mother scraped the name Patricia Ann from the ruins

of her discarded Delta, thinking it would offer me shield

and shelter, that leering men would skulk away at the slap

of it. Her hands on the hips of Alabama, she went for flat

and functional, then siphoned each syllable of drama,

repeatedly crushing it with her broad, practical tongue

until it sounded like an instruction to God and not a name.

She wanted a child of pressed head and knocking knees,

a trip-up in the doubledutch swing, a starched pinafore

and peppermint-in-the-sour pickle kinda child, stiff-laced

and unshakably fixed on salvation. Her Patricia Ann

would never idly throat the Lord's name or wear one

of those thin, sparkled skirts that flirted with her knees.

She'd be a nurse or a third-grade teacher or a postal drone,

 

jobs requiring alarm clock discipline and sensible shoes.

My four downbeats were music enough for a vapid life

of butcher shop sawdust and fatback as cuisine, for Raid

spritzed into the writhing pockets of a Murphy bed.

No crinkled consonants or muted hiss would summon me.

 

My daddy detested borders. One look at my mother's

watery belly, and he insisted, as much as he could insist

with her, on the name Jimi Savannah, seeking to bless me

with the blues-bathed moniker of a ball breaker, the name

of a grown gal in a snug red sheath and unlaced All-Stars.

He wanted to shoot muscle through whatever I was called,

arm each syllable with tiny weaponry so no one would

mistake me for anything other than a tricky whisperer

with a switchblade in my shoe. I was bound to be all legs,

a bladed debutante hooked on Lucky Strikes and sugar.

When I sent up prayers, God's boy would giggle and consider.

 

Daddy didn't want me to be anybody's sure-fire factory,

nobody's callback or seized rhythm, so he conjured

a name so odd and hot even a boy could claim it. And yes,

he was prepared for the look my mother gave him when

he first mouthed his choice, the look that said, That's it,

you done lost your goddamned mind. She did that thing

she does where she grows two full inches with righteous,

and he decided to just whisper Love you, Jimi Savannah

whenever we were alone, re- and rechristening me the seed

of Otis, conjuring his own religion and naming it me.