The Naming of Frank Torch

MEMOIR (and) GRAND PRIZE WINNER ISSUE 3 CONTEST

RAFAEL TORCH

At bottom, the name is all the gestures he has in him and presents to the world. Who is this man, at root, to go so carelessly into the New World with this new name? The title seems to have reconciled a silent deal that was made at Ellis Island. It was the last balance to be transferred. You agreed, Frank Torch. You walked away from the inspection desk and into Manhattan with it. You wandered into the Lower West Side with it among other peoples, tall buildings, small, crowded streets. Frank Torch fit all the possibilities of the here and now. It correlated with the land you married in 1911. It had a certain neatness to it. It was large enough for you and had a kind of wallop when spoken; the front two syllables at the front of the mouth, “Frank” out of the rubbing between the bottom teeth and lower lips and “Torch” like you were spitting it out of your teeth in hatred, your tongue stuck on the palate, shoving it out. There was a hardness, a kind of recklessness to it. Your name was not short for anything the way Charlie was for Charles or Jimmy for James. Let’s be clear, you were not a Francis or Franklin or Franz. You were one hundred percent “Frank.” There’s nothing complex about it. It’s a rough-and-tumble name. You lived hard by it; it was like a piece of quarry marble, freshly cut and sharp at the edges. You dug in the earth with it like it was a pickaxe, Frank Torch. You must have found yourself saying it over and over again to see how it sounded in your ears. “Frank Torch.” What was prepared for you with this name? What poetry, what grammar, what confederacy? 

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