Spoon River Middle School: 46

Robin Gaye

Free Writing

My parents named me for a common bird—

a dingy top, a breast of red, a song

that’s not among the best I’ve ever heard,

a chirping sort of mix of short and long.

It is the kind of name that girls or boys

could have, and so particularly here

in middle school I’ve had so little joy

in it. It is a reason now I fear

to leave a class, to walk the halls, where I—

as certainly and suns and moons do rise

and set—will hear the laughter and the cry

about how Robin’s not a name for guys.

Some boys will whistle—or will chirp like birds.

While others, always knowing what to say,

will hurl at me their sharpest weapon-words

of Fag! and Queer! and all their terms for gay.