Robert
McAlaney



For Whom I Am Named









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For whom I am named is a love-letter to fatherhood. The project works meaning against the sentimentality of archival familial imagery; with alertness to the power currents of identity and destiny. My father's personal archive is utilized heavily as a point of reference and repurpose, whilst my own poetry is wielded as a force of shaping understanding of fatherhood's complexities as well as disturbing the boundaries of the father-son relationship. I cannot remember the last time I held my father, yet I kissed my mother's cheek this morning.





My father gave me his name.

You gave me your name,
Forging peace with tradition.
You gave me your face,
I wear it and pray I do it proud. 

You used to be able to dance here,
Before they planted seeds and put up signs.
When the word sacrifice was a stranger,
And you could not spell death. 

When you did not like the taste of wine,
And beer made you gag.
Annie had not yet met the waves,
Nor Irene the clouds.

Press your palm to your sons’ sleeping heads,
Ruffle their hair in hopes to reach them in their dreams,
Sow a kiss on three cheeks,
That are yet to grow stubble.



Gone Again.

I’m on the bus back and it’s blurry,
I know outside is every place I went as a kid.
But it’s blurry.

Just lights and glimpses of corners.

We lock eyes,
I look away,
And it’s gone again.



Ladder Song.

I think I’m starting to forget,
The sound of your footsteps on the stairs.
The tremble of the ladder,
As you clamber to the loft.

I finally sung,
That song you told me to sing.
Only you forgot to say,
That it’d make me bleed.



Wounds.

Place me in your leathered palms.
Guide me like those false mystics.
But be kind to the sky when I wander,
For wandering’s what turns boys to men.

Who scraped those scars into your knuckles?
Was it that place meant to teach?
I won’t ask you if it hurt,
I know you're yet to make your mind.

In a place where bravery is a stranger to bounds,
Curse the ghost who claims the chapel.
Disturb the stillness that frightens the cries.
Do it for your mother and her rosary beads.