My Name Is by Carmella de Keyser
- Dust
- 19 hours ago
- 3 min read
My Name Is
My name is: ‘Where are you from?’
My name is: ‘You’re reasonably articulate for someone of your race’
My name is: ‘But, even though you are born here, where are you actually from?’
My name is: ‘Oh that’s where you’re from - I’ve been on holiday there, it was the worst holiday I’ve ever had, slow service everywhere! No offence…’
My name is: ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but your food smells weird!’
My name is: ‘You’re too sensitive! I have lots of friends from your country’.
My name is: ‘You have a quirky look about you! Especially your nose’.
My name is: ‘Hope you don’t mind me asking, but why did you move to here, when you know us real residents struggle to find housing ourselves?’
My name is: ‘Your name is so difficult to pronounce, do you have another name we can use?’
My name is: ‘We regret to inform you, we won’t be renewing your contract, your work ethic just didn’t quite fit within our team.’
My name is: ‘I deserve better than this…’
My name is: one world/equality/ humility/ vulnerability/humanness/omnitude…
I am the folk songs I hear soundlessly,
During the quiet blue sedation of early rise mornings,
I am tiny etched tea glasses,
Infused with vanilla sugar-spun solace and cinnamon.
I am my descendants’ herbs whispered upon old salt tongue.
I am the dreams,
I tenderly still dare to exhale, and cerebrally wrestle with,
In the joyful coral flames in the drink of the Pacific Sea.
I am the everlasting kiss I gave my baba, as she passed away, and serenely blended with halcyon eternity.
I am the white-webbed love within the obsidian eyes of my mother,
I am the soft cell dancing in the late-night dewy moonshine oat,
And the soft pigmented nostalgia shared with old friends at clementine dusk.
And I am not you.
I am not the inside of your unquiet mind.
I am not your projection.
I am a soul to be seen,
A human sea.
And a sea is not a stranger.
I go in peace.
Selah.
Carmella de Keyser is originally from Camden, a University of Manchester graduate, she writes poetry exploring identity, intersections, ambivalence, otherization, 90’s sub-cultures, liminal spaces, grief and feelings of displacement. Founder of the Harlow Circle of Poetry Stanza. Judge for the Harlow Open Poetry Competition, 2025. Her poems have been featured and broadcast in magazines and poetry anthologies including for BBC Sounds, Macmillan, Dream Catcher International Arts Journal, The Madrid Review, Authora Australis, The Dark Poets Club, The Candyman’s Trumpet, The Hooghly Review, The Starbeck Orion, The Dirigible Balloon, Your Harlow Newspaper, Suburban Witchcraft Magazine, and Wishbone Words Magazine. Honourable Mention for the Dark Poets Prize 2024, and Small Space Deep Impact Award 2025, a featured poet for the Seventh Quarry Magazine in 2026, a Winner of the Hedgehog Press Poetry Competition 2024 and Winner of the Crimson Spine Competition 2025. Her debut pamphlet The Liminal Light of the Night is out now with the Hedgehog Poetry Press and her successive pamphlet Heart Muscle, will become available with the Hedgehog Poetry Press in 2026.