That Which We Call

Eileen Huang

My parents say they stuck withered
fingers through the pages of a baby name pamphlet, past
Ariels and Bridgets and Charlottes lined up
against white paper like tin soldiers
on a hot day, flipping through pen-carved pages
only to find:
                  two syllables; meaning “light,”, Old French
                  for aveline, bittersweet hazelnut,
tinged with Romanticism and Gaelic lore of
red-haired maidens. Criteria
which my skewed eyelids can
never meet. I tell them it was a poor
attempt to recreate Dadaism, that Duchamp
will never spring back from moist earth
to pat them on their backs for serendipity, but they tell me,
                two syllables; derived from ‘Ελενη,
Celtic-raised goddess of golden eclipses, the lantern
bringing hungry miners back to day—but I am not the sun, not
the slant of moon, not a cradle for children at night. As if this is a connotation
I should be proud of,
                 two syllables; Irish adaptation of “Helen,”,
the kind of firm peasant stock, the Trojan queen—
my hands are not
calloused with labor, my eyes not wrinkled
in good nature, crimson-kissed arms not plump enough to knead strong dough
in breeches. I am not
your goddess, your yawning deity. My own name is never
tight enough to fit into a definition
but never loose enough to find its own. Soldiers do not call for
me across oceans,
sailors do not hear me in their ears,
sirens dragging them beneath pearl-tinged tides. Au revoir,
Evelyn. Au revoir,
Helen. All I know
is that I will never taste
the snap of a hundred arrows,
never hear the sails of a thousand ships
launching
in my name.