for Zakiyyah G.E. Capehart-Bolling
Kevin Dublin
“Would you think of birthing a child and not giving your child a name? That’s what your poems are.”
-Abiodun Oyewole of the Last Poets teaching at the Brooklyn Moon Cafe
I.
It is the practice of our people to give meaning in a name,
and we show honor by calling each other by our names.
How do you give one name to one who contains multitudes?
One who works to tell the stories of her people until the voice tires?
One who has healed with her hands and her mind as much as her words?
You name her the same way you name each drop of water in a river.
From a North Carolina Mother who was enamored with mythology:
the name of her oldest daughter Betty,
the name of her next daughter Gwendolyn Elaine,
the name of the youngest daughter Cassandra.
II.
Ahoskie, North Carolina,
a Wednesday Child is born on March 15.
Hertford County’s Dr. Weaver catches
a girl, passes her to the nurse Elaine,
before she meets the arms of her mother,
eyes and arms of her father.
Her father remembers choosing her name,
but her mother remembers that
he is mistaken.
Like brushes in purses
or notebooks in backpacks,
wherever you go, you carry a name.
III.
Each name:
Gwendolyn can mean: a blessed ring or a beaming college roommate, the move in youth from North Carolina to New York and missing the familiar faces of neighbors who always speak, missing the tastes of dishes: no fresh collard greens, pan bread, or just-picked and washed fruit to eat.
Elaine can mean: a poet who holds so much higher than the moon, a nurse who lent a name to a future nurse, a shining light spilling beneath a bedroom doorway in the night, a name that mother’s call in dreams.
Láidé can mean: a shortened form of Ọláyídé which signifies wealth and was given by the West African dance instructor, Nana Dinizulu, and his African Dancers & Drummers troupe; the truths about places we move to— they’re only where we are, and there’s always somewhere deeper we come from.
Zakiyyah can mean: growing in purity, and wisdom, mean pages, mean a choice, mean a voice called from across a party room, mean being led by Allah and the Most Honorable, tuning the internal and collective resonance.
Nabiha can mean: noble, discerning, intelligent, the middle of a page, a mirror of the spirit within.
Asya can mean: thoughtful, can mean a continent, can be a name planned for a daughter, then chosen for the self.
Akua can mean: migration can mean walks through and splashing in puddles of rain the naming tradition in Ghana to carry the day you were born with you, a reminder of first steps onto Ghanian soil, surrounded by your people, stress melting like butter from a skillet, making a future to grow, learn, share, build community, make a performance space after another migration.
IV.
What else do you do when your heart carries so many stories?
What else do you do when you’re in love with a strong,
Black man whose golden voice and mind & soul is full of songs?
A cross country drive from both your homes in New York
to San Francisco’s Geary Street, with children raised,
reminding: “mama don’t— won’t put down the mic!”
Through life, we take names and make migration:
from a “Mulatto Town” past Powellsville,
where every other person was a cousin just
like the second grade teachers at home
to a plane above clouds after father found work
and set up more opportunities for work up North.
New York: skyscrapers from a ferry towering
over glimmers on the water. So tall, so luring
that sister Crissy can’t turn away and slams
face-first into a lamppost.
A journey in the stories, with each story bridging a gap.
V.
It is the practice of our people to give meaning in a name,
and we show honor by calling each other by our names.
A Black woman who knows the potential of the human spirit
is to become, Zakiyyah Gwendolyn Elaine Laide Nabiha
Aysa Aku’a Capehart-Bolling, unbound healer, eternally becoming.
/ what follows are reverb of each previous section /
I. name (verb):
To give a name to, to call by a name.
transitive: to give (a person or thing) a specified name.
as in:
it was once not yours, but someone else’ r s and you received it like Brooklyn Banana Bread served warm as a first order at the Brooklyn Moon Cafe,
as in:
it was once not yours, but someone else’s and you received it like a mother’s beloved college roommate, Gwendolyn; a beautiful and attentive nurse at birth, Elaine.
as in:
it was once not yours, but someone else’s and you received it like a dream of your mama calling you, “Elaine! Elaine! Get up and write!”
Her journey begins in Ahoskie, North Carolina, a town called “The Only One” because there is no other in the world that shares it from Weyanoke people’s tongues, just a few miles from the Chowan River.
We all have origins
from the mouth
of a body of water.
an excerpt from “On These Shoulders I Stand” by Zakiyyah GE Capehart-Bolling
/ Reverb /
II. Carry
a pen & paintbrush
from one place to another
still— the same blue sky
“Journey of Names” excerpt from an interview with Zakiyyah GE Capehart-Bolling
/ Reverb /
III. Láídé
DNA like dawn
Shared across generations
Bantu descendance
TuBeNu Cultural Gatherers performance of “Creator Has a Master Plan” & “Earth’s Rebirth“
/ Reverb /
IV. Arrival in the Tenderloin
Beneath a single umbrella
His arm wraps your shoulder warm
As a middle step in diatonic jazz
The soles of your shoes meet sidewalk
Together in California
Tires tilt toward curb and puddle
Syncopated drizzle ripples the full moon
“Honoring a Name,” excerpt from an interview with Zakiyyah GE Capehart-Bolling
/ Reverb /
V. To be Named
for Zakiyyah G.E. Capehart-Bolling
autumn fog clears
with the sound of a leaf blower
uncovering concrete, muddling
a coast live oak’s shadow.
i didn’t know the tree’s name,
so i asked in order to honor it.
we, who are given names,
who chose names, who make them,
know that each name has a story,
same as a wrist stroke of tanner paint
against fresh canvas, against rice paper
ready for a second coat.
each name has a story,
& each story contains
a life. a life has meaning,
& inside each meaning: a name.
& so on & so on, as dawn
autumn fog clears
