By Button Poetry
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Dave Harris, performing at Icehouse in Minneapolis.
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:02
The story of my name goes something like this.
00:05
Around third grade, the white kids start calling me “Dave”.
00:09
Just like them, to make my name smaller.
00:12
Have you noticed that?
00:14
They’ll slice even the simplest of names until it fits their mouth.
00:18
And happily I accepted the title,
00:21
more than once.
00:22
In high school, they nicknamed me “D-Hair”.
00:25
It stuck like a new skin.
00:27
How proud I was to be worth the space between a giant’s teeth.
00:31
I smiled whenever they claimed me.
00:34
I snapped at anyone who used my other name.
00:37
The only ones who call me David are those who have known me forever.
00:40
Harris is my father’s last name.
00:43
Harris has English property origins.
00:45
I belong to my father, even though he is history.
00:48
This is how a giant conquers.
00:50
Fear what you are.
00:52
A Harris, meaning a slave to the history before me.
00:55
I like to think I’ve made the name my own.
00:58
I can’t tell if I’ve reclaimed myself or become too numb to change.
01:02
When they first came for my name, I surrendered.
01:05
I’m not lost,
01:07
though I wonder what I have lost.
01:09
I longed for specificity.
01:12
African American is so infinitely vague.
01:15
I stopped believing in God because God is an imprecise metaphor.
01:19
An absent father.
01:20
Ancestry.
01:22
I am often overwhelmed by the feeling of missing.
01:25
I want a myth with my name on it.
01:29
Victory.
01:31
My mountaintop.
01:32
I point at the third graders and named them Dirt, Stink, and Rot.
01:37
I point at the old white men, and say “Burn,”
01:39
and there is no more history.
01:41
I point at my father, and say,
01:44
“Come home.”
01:47
“Tell me what my name is.”
01:50
(applause)
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This post was previously published on YouTube and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video
