"He Said My Name" by Jake Skeets

He Said My Name

He said my name is really a kiln, a haul of groundwater 
because mouths open into hot vapor. He said my name
is actually a riverbed. He said to make of my name a choking
of cracked ice. He said to say my name is old water in a ditch.
 
He said to make of my name a peach tree on fire, a palm
of pollen. He said my name is really an aquifer, an aster field, 
an orchestra of damp tarps in a sheep corral, a downed pole
in Rocksprings. He said my name is as tall as a smokestack. 
 
He said my name tends to cause a draft, to be a touch of tequila. 
He said my name is reed, heavy blue mornings 
in June. He said to make of my name wildfire smoke. 
He said my name is rumor, the low beams of a pickup.
 
He said my name is really a sermon of locusts, boulder rust
in a river gorge. He said to make of my name a desert garden.
He said my name is the one pink evening when you whisper 
your name to the moon and it whispers back in monsoon.




Appears in Horses (Milkweed, 2026), originally published in Orion Magazine

Photo Credit: Deanna Dent

Jake Skeets is the author of Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers, winner of the National Poetry Series, American Book Award, and Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and Horses, which was named one of Literary Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2026. His honors include a Whiting Award, Mellon Projecting All Voices Fellowship, NEA Grant for Arts Projects, and he was the 2023-2024 Grisham Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi. He is currently serving as the third Navajo Nation Poet Laureate and teaches in the MFA program at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

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