I’ve always wanted to be full of meaning.
Like a woman named Marisol

—mar y sol—or a man whose parents passed 
down the name Paniagua—pan y agua.

I went to Paris to find it. An archaeologist said: 
Achanzar, a small home, a mountain range

in northern Spain; Achanzar from the Basque,
like a cottage, a chalet. Of my first name,

the amount of beauty required to launch a ship.
Miscellaneous flattery. Enough to break

a baguette in two. So I looked it up: a moon.
The lumpy kind. Helene in high-res. 

My parents couldn’t have known, naming
a baby in Vancouver, what spun in the cosmos.

But they rushed to a hospital on a winter’s night 
beneath the light of a moon with no name.

Subscribe to Read More