(Ireland)

Tarots of naming books are doled out around the world to parents
who are weighed by their only choice in the well programmed process.
The names that I bestowed upon my brood I hoped would sculpt their futures;
Strength, Praise, Peace and Lady-like their monikers of providence.

Titles with adverse undertones I had scratched from my lists and
no matter how stirred I was by those names on my cards, I could
not see fit to elect a forename of a teenager slain famously
in battle. Not even a poetess, not even a folk hero.

Too often I have seen folk who have been moulded by their names;
like Malalai of Maiwand who did indeed become Grandmother
to another young campaigner, her kismet is her crusade.
Malala’s legacy from her father; alongside his valour.

Mingora’s pothole-bangs are bombs and graves, the play of little boys;
where extremists ambushed her school-bus, barked her name to single
out the child who fought to learn. They shot her through the head, Malala;
her namesake shared too with Afghan schools named in a woman’s honour.

Eerie Mingora, silent apart from its hiccups of peace
and the echo of a voice I hope will age as Pashtun poems.
Remarkable Malala; whose name means Grief-Stricken. I pray
will prove the cards wrong, that her name will take on new meaning.

Kelly Creighton is Belfast born, 1979; she is an Irish poet, fiction writer and artist. With poems and short stories in anthologies and magazines her work is currently, and forthcoming, in literary journals A New Ulster, Lapwing Publications, Electric Windmill Press and Inkspill Magazine. She is on Poethead blog’s index of women poets. Kelly is editing her historical fiction novel, short story and poetry collections. http://kellycreighton.webs.com/