Poetry and the Name Game
By Kimy Jean Martinez Knight
Blog January 6, 2025 Part 1.
Recently I have been typing up my handwritten, cursive!, poems from my first poetry book dated 1985. Really it is an archive of memories/moments dating back to my pubescent age of thirteen, a few poems were written a year before I decided to take from my aged and crinkled college rule paper to begin the first bound and clothed notebook of poetry. I produced a hundred and thirty-nine poems for this book, I have five of these books altogether plus about three boxes of poems written on scratch paper that I would carry in my waitress apron during my La Piñata era. Also included in the boxes are notebooks and random receipts/bus transfers/ newspapers/art postcards paper with bits of poetry scribbled, crossed-out scribble to be scribbled again with more efficient words that hit home. These poems were from my age of thirteen up to my young adult age of twenty-three. However, my focus is on the opening cover page of my first book, you know if you’re a journal writer, “This book belongs to” entry.
Who the hell does this book belong to? The entry reads:
“Kimy Jean Rickey (Martinez)
otherwise
Mardii Mardinez or
The Sophisticated Lady
or
Cassandra Malvista
April 19, 1985
Poems of My World”
I understand in pubescence we are exploring our identity, however in the description I’m naming multiple identities at once! Now, I’m infusing in this essay a prompt from a local poetry competition a few years back, which I avoided because of my uncontainable mental ranting with myself that left me with too many avenues that led to too many heartaches, “What is the meaning of your name?”
“KIMY”
“Kimy” was formed by an overdrugged mother, my mother. I was the last of her litter of six, so she skipped seeing the doctor in her pregnancy with me, no check-up appointments. She took a taxi to the closest hospital in Martinez, which is ironic being my maiden name. As retold, “ I almost had you in the taxi.” I imagined my mother continuing, “And, I handed the driver my pack of cigarettes, including the one lit in my mouth, as a tip. You’re welcome!” She was brought in with a high fever, yellow jaundice. The doctor looked at her and flat out said, “There is a 99% chance your baby will be retarded.” Those were the days they had used that sad word (anyone with learning challenges were isolated and were treated differently), and with negative intent to psychologically punish my mother. I didn’t come out "retarded", just as I know today I’m neurodivergent, but more due to socializing restraints and negative reinforcement and having a mother who had the non-conformist gene, contrary disposition, and her feeling that society was completely against her views. I mean, how many mother’s tell their children they were supposed to be “retarded” when they were born when they aren't? When I was a late teen I worked for a city teaching disadvantaged adults with learning differences, learning challenges, and with physical impairments. How past generations viewed people with differences was to separate them from the daily lives of many, unfortunately.
So I was named after a daytime television star, you know, from one of those soap operas, “As the World Turns” or “Days of Our Lives” or “One Life to Live” or “Guiding Light.” People don’t need soap operas anymore because they can emote on all the social media apps, even better platforms for the same drama because it’s real life! And when you’ve come to embarrass yourself enough, just delete old account and resurrect another one in a different name, different identity, different friends, recreating a different formula to match a personality you desire. Better yet, have AI do it for you. It’s no longer the world of “DIY” but “AIDIFU (AI Do It For You).” Shoot, I remember when “JDI (Just Do It)” was enough. Anyway, the nurse or practitioner came into my mother’s hospital room after a couple of days demanding my mother to name her sickly baby. The first thing that popped into my mother’s mind was a daytime actress Kimberley who probably portrayed a manipulating, sexually conniving, glamour freak, drama queen. I mean, maybe in my later life I would come to reflect these attributes, but it would have taken years of work to achieve and not what a baby should have been pressured with at day one, or as with my mother’s case, day three. I was under bright lights, I had that to contend to from day one, at least let me mature into my pale putty complexion that would take me out of this place.
So my mother said, “Kimberley” and the nurse asked, “How do you spell?” And my mother replied, “I don’t know. Just put Kimmy” and the nurse put “Kimmy” in her own spelling, “Kimy” in which through out the years I was called “Kimy” with a long “i” pronunciation in the initial attempt by teachers and others figuring out how to tackle the spelling of my name. Go ahead, say it out loud with the long "i" sound! Sounds funny doesn't it! Well, it’s on my birth certificate and so that’s how I spell it when I’m using it as my name. Believe me, you don’t know how many have argued that I’ve spelled my name wrong and I have to explain I go by the name on my birth certificate. Some have refused to spell my name that way saying, “I’m not going to spell your name wrong, people will think I don’t know how to spell.” Or “Look, I corrected the spelling on your name. Somebody in the office spelled it incorrectly. Now you don’t have to worry about it for your other classes.” The others completely avoid the “ee” ending by naming me “Kim.” I try to correct them, “Actually, my name is with a “y” it’s “Kim-eeeeee.” They retort by saying, “But that’s a child’s name.” And, constrained with PTSD, I retort back without thinking, “I’m retarded.” And they say, “No, you’re not.” And I say in emotional confusion, “Well, I was supposed to be and that’s why my name is spelled the way it is.” And they say, “Okay, fine.” They then add the “y” with the addition of saying my name with a pouty child-like inflection, “There you go, Kimeeeee, waah, waah, ms. pouty pants.” Whatever.
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