glenis_redmond2
The Wind in My Name
by Glenis Redmond

No stage name no hip hop moniker
’cause what my mama and daddy handed down to me
on the day before King gave his I Have Dream Speech
is grounded in what’s real: Glenis Gale Redmond

As if my parents knew their baby girl born
in the sixties needed to be fitted with two black fist
Irony aside of the Celtic twist of the slave holder’s grip
I like the tight fit of my two Welsh names: Glenis Gale
Valley on one hand, Wind on the other
and ancestral forces at my back
while I face the Shadows of Death:
the decade of killing into which I was born
King on the balcony of the Lorraine,
Evers in Mississippi in his own driveway,
the bullets that struck Malcolm seven times
on 166th and Broadway,
and mama’s brother Uncle Pete
slaughtered by his so called doctor,
boy take these pills ain’t nothin wrong with you, but lazy
only for him to die the next day
on his living room couch at age 23

There’s real hurt in this hurricane
So, there’s no pretense just urgency
and I need every fiber in my fast twitch muscles
as I blow past pain
as I run like the wind in my name

But they don’t like it when we run
— made laws against our legs poised in the arc of freedom
String me up by my given name
that they try to call me out of:
nigger, bitch, wench, gal and ho
the noose they want me to work and twerk to
before I dance that swing and dangle
I got blood memory running
like a fever in my name

So, I jerk possessed with spirits unrest
to the cunning in Cunningham,
the slave holders that gave my great-grandma her last name
I got the silence of shackles of those that never rebelled in my name,
but they left the plot in me stirring with these songs of freedom

They say it’s wind
but I believe it is fire in my name
My grandma rising up off the Rosemont Plantation
in Waterloo, South Carolina
where she stirred and stirred
but ain’t no tombstone in her name
This ain’t no play play, but for real

I try to keep it real even at age 9
Mama say, stop acting so mannish,
but you know legs crossed,
hair restrained like a dog on a chain
ain’t headed nowhere: and lower your voice
because loud ain’t lovely,
but it’s not in my nature
and if you expected it to be
you probably should have not
have placed the jet that broke the sound barrier
Glamorous Glennis all up in my name
Destiny and fate dictate I break laws of gravity

Black ink turns words into wings
that morphs into poetry
It’s in the teeth, in the tongue, in the lungs
and the breath of how my people got ovah
Yes, wind, air and the asthmatic breath all in this name,
but I got plenty of ground holding me down
geography in my name: Cherokee mountains
Yes, I got red in my last name,
the West Coast of Africa: Cameroon and Nigeria
I got black and green in this name,
slave port struggle in my name
auction block to sweet grass in my name
I got fire
I got ammunition in this name
I feel like that female Moses
running over and underground in my name
holding pens and paper to hands and hearts
I say, write your way out

I Glenis up everything:
the depression of my personal and collective history
Wind is a serious force not to be toyed with
— no cubic zirconia gleam
— no pretend in me
— no persona wanna be
just my grandma saying all you gotta do is stay black and die
and that that’s what she did
after a 109 years in her name
I write what she couldn’t in my name
I live and give breath to others through my name
I’m a force that breathes life into voice
take what my mama and daddy gave me in my name
grounded and rooted in what’s real
I claim all this and more in my name

PHOTOGRAPH: Glenis Redmond, TedX Talk, Poetry as Healer — Greenville, South Carolina, 2013.

Author photo by Nils Fretwurst. 

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: “Wind in My Name” was written in Chicago at YCA with Kevin Coval, Roger Bonair Agard, and Jamila Woods approximately two years ago at a Writing Intensive. Workshop participants were given the name poem prompt. This poem came out in one session as a rant. Obviously, my name unpacked spoke to every element of my life. In this poem, I address lineage, belonging, alienation, colonization, womanism, and marginalization.

Johns

AUTHOR’S NOTE ON HER NAME: I fully love my name. My mama did me right with my name. I was named after Glynis Johns, a 1950s Welsh flamboyant actress. As a college student I used to mime to Judy Collins’ song “Send in the Clowns.” I just found out recently that my namesake also sang that song. This poetry exploration feels cyclical and spiral-ish, a lot like my spiritual beliefs.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Glenis Redmond lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. She travels all over the state and the country as a Road Poet with two posts as the Poet-in-Residence at The Peace Center for the Performing Arts in Greenville, South Carolina, and at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, New Jersey. This year she served as the Mentor Poet for the National Student Poets Program. She prepared student poets to read at the Library of Congress, the Department of Education, and for the First Lady, Michelle Obama, at The White House. Glenis is a Cave Canem Fellow and a North Carolina Literary Fellowship Recipient and a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist. She helped create the first Writer-in-Residence at the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site in Flat Rock, North Carolina. Glenis is also a full-time road poet, performing and teaching poetry across the country. She believes that poetry is a healer. She can be found across America in the trenches applying pressure to those in need, one poem at a time. Visit her at glenisredmond.com.