I’m Glad my Name is Graham
I’m told my parents picked out my given name
several years before my birth.
A late-night conversation on a full stomach
inside a Nashville-area Cracker Barrel
after my mom finished scraping teeth,
and dad was done trying to become
a country music star.
There, they decided to name me Graham,
after the grocer, the department store clerk.
The husband whose bride wore a borrowed
blue dress instead of white, whose bouquet
was a fist full of roadside weeds.
They named me Graham, after the old man
who spent his Saturday mornings on a jon boat
baiting hooks and reeling in big trophy fish,
and who used a flattened silver spoon instead of a knife
to dip out a generous helping of Duke’s mayonnaise.
Who made his floats with chocolate ice cream
instead of vanilla, used Coke instead of root beer,
and in the summers, sat on Fripp Island until
week’s end, sneaking peeks at sunbathing women
but never letting go of Atha’s loving hand.
Written in loving memory of Graham Mangum.
