TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown. 

When I was married, I would sometimes get mail addressed to MRS. followed by my then-husband’s name. It’s an old-fashioned way of addressing a married woman: MRS. JOHN SMITH, MRS. ADAM JONES. And if I’m honest, yes, most of that mail came from his older relatives, people who were kind and who meant well. But wow, did it make me feel like an accessory to someone else’s life. Like I was in a little sidecar, riding along but not driving.

The funny part of this is that I didn’t even change my last name when I got married. I was Maggie Smith, not MRS. anything. When someone called me MRS. SMITH I probably winced a little. MRS. SMITH was—and is—my mother. I was, and am, MS. SMITH. I ask my children’s friends to call me Maggie. It’s just easier. Some of them take to that naturally, and others have been raised not to use first names with adults—I get it! I was raised that way, too! So I don’t mind when they awkwardly call me “Rhett’s Mom,” for example. I’m pretty comfortable riding in my children’s sidecars. 

Maybe all of this concern about naming sounds nitpicky, but names matter. What we call one another matters. There is power—and respect—in naming, and in who gets named at all. 

In many of the stories I grew up with, the men are named but their wives and daughters are not. That makes it pretty clear who the main characters are, doesn’t it? For example, in the story of Noah’s Ark, in the book of Genesis in the Christian bible, there are four wives on the ark—the wives of Noah and his three sons. Guess which characters aren’t named? That’s right—the wives. Noah’s wife is identified as just that: Noah’s wife. 

I can just imagine her getting a card from someone that’s addressed that way—NOAH’S WIFE—and sighing deeply, or rolling her eyes, or muttering under her breath. 

Today’s poem is one in which the wife of Noah gets to speak.

Noah’s Nameless Wife Takes Inventory
by C.T. Salazar

horse        heart      hyena      heart      swan          spine
silver         fish          shin           -ing         in                  black
water        yes          timber       wolf        tooth         yes
pity             the          ark              with        its                belly
full               of             glow           -ing        tongues  
touch        the           lion’s           paw        only           while
it                   sleeps    the              red         -tailed       hawk
with            jewels     for               eyes        swallows
the              field         mouse       and          the             mouse
was             the           only             proof       the             field
existed                        what           else          will              be
forgotten  the          hawk          will             starve
soon           we             will               starve     soon          the
dogs           will             howl            like           a                 god
learning                        the              word         for             light
and             nothing                         will              howl       back

"Noah's Nameless Wife Takes Inventory" by C.T. Salazar from HEADLESS JOHN THE BAPTIST HITCHHIKING © 2022 C.T. Salazar. Used by permission of Acre Books.