Poets from the latest issue of The Bridge read their work.
Paternity
my last name is brady.
it roughly translates to
spirited,
though my father says it’s closer to
cunning.
it all makes sense, after all,
i come from a long line of
tricksters and
earth shakers.
but somehow i can’t
seem to
shake the ghost
of a thousand ancestors,
a boundless line stretching
into a past
that i am meant to
uphold.
but i am destined to
surrender the name,
break the chain,
sacrifice a sliver of my identity and
embrace an unfamiliar one.
i am destined to
conceive and bear a child
whose name will not resemble my own.
my heart is already broken.
so is my claddagh ring.
Elizabeth Brady is an English MA student at Bridgewater State University. She works on campus as the English department’s graduate assistant. As an undergraduate, six of her poems were published in two editions of The Bridge. Currently, she is reading a lot of literary criticism for classes. When she isn’t doing that, she’s been reading “Helium” by Rudy Francisco.
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