Tiwana Poem No. 1
(for Richard Garcia and Alexs D. Pate
and for my daughter Nile V. Miller)

The autobiography of this name,
middled on my birth certificate
between two others,
would begin this way: Abandoned,
like a rough draft, at birth …

I always cringed, but never answered
To the slander when called:
That ghettofabulous alias was not my real name.

I had already grown accustomed to saying:
“I am Cherryl. C-H-E-R-R-Y-L,
cherryl (plus) L,
hard –ch like in ‘church’ … /churl/,”

which is exotic French for beloved.

Tiwana comes from a man
who merely thought it sounded pretty,
who, until fourteen, only had initials himself –
W.C. – which also stands for water closet
And means toilet. He is my father,
So what does that suggest about me?

I asked him once what the word Tiwana means.
Of course, he didn’t know. I was content
not knowing its meaning, too – being named,
yet unnamed, in this way – and then I learned
that it is Native American for created,
and the spelling of a Punjabi tribe in North India.

Am I more knowledgeable or ignorant
for meaning?

A name is three things:
a visual rise and fall in landscape,
sound, and meaning.
What is designed when a poem or child
is unnamed? Untitled Or must live up to a name
she has not earned and does not own?

I come from a place where friends had names like
Dickrabbit, Squirrel, Snake, Deucey, Sweet Black,
Stinkpot, Sugarpig, Schooloop, June Gal, Plunk and Boot.

These people knew what a real name was –
the song everyone sings of you
after you are born.

*Winner of the 2002 Hughes, Diop, Knight Poetry Award from the Gwendolyn Brooks Center in Chicago, Cherryl Floyd-Miller has held writing fellowships with Idyllwild (poetry, 2003), Caldera (playwriting, 2002), Cave Canem (poetry, 1998-2000), the Vermont Studio Center (poetry, 1997) and the Indiana Arts Commission (poetry, 1994-95). Her work appears or is forthcoming in Southern Hum, Copper Nickel, Terminus, Broad River Review, North Carolina Literary Review, Crab Orchard Review, The American Muse, sidereality, Poetry Midwest, Beyond the Frontier (poetry, ed. by E. Ethelbert Miller, Black Classic Press, October 2002), Keeping the Faith (nonfiction, ed. by Tavis Smiley, Random House, October 2002), Mischief, Caprice and Other Poetic Strategies (poetry, ed. by Terry Wolverton, Red Hen Press, 2004), and Proverbs for the People (fiction, Kensington Publishing Co., June 2003).

Her first collection of poetry, Utterance: A Museology of Kin, was a 2001 semifinalist for the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry and a finalist for the 2002 Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award. Her second collection of poetry, Chops (Nexus Press, Oct. 2004) won a 2005 AIGA Gold SEED Award and was nominated for a 2005 Georgia Author of the Year Award. Both literature and visual art, Chops is a part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Museum of Fine Art in Boston.

Also a playwright and stage director, Floyd-Miller is a native of Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. Her play, Settling Sophia, received its world premiere with New World Stage Theatre in her home state in September 2003 and its Midwest premiere at Western Michigan University in October 2004. Selected as the first Fulton County Arts Council DIALOG Fellow in 2004, she is a board member of Poetry Atlanta and teaches creative writing courses in her community and at the Spruill Center for the Arts in Atlanta.