Dan Quixote
My parents had this thing about
People with all five vowels in their name
Were more likely to succeed.
Dad, Jim Quixote, always regretted
That his parents had been in the dark
About that and, after being fired
From his job at Gerouila University, lost his nerve,
Became alcoholic, and finally jumped
Into a windmill–the new kind
the insurance money
Then my mom, Julie Quixote–well,
I won't go on.
But they never told me and to tell you the truth,
I hated my name. You can imagine the teasing.
Then, at age thirty-five
I saw it for myself. Not a weird name
Fuck Spoon River and what they said,
But a glorious one,
And searching their diaries from the year
Of my birth, I found them–
"A perfect name," my Dad wrote,
"No consonant repeated either, a multiplicitous ten
If ever there was one.
And Mum's note– well, maybe I shouldn't
repeat that either,
But it said, "each tempo different
In the bonding gene.
He will never be a bond slave."
Since then, of course, I've brought
My brand, Dan Quixote Mills,
To the seventy-five billion
Dollar a year business it is.
And all because they waited,
Let me figure out most of it for myself,
–about language, that is–,
While the windmills turned
Out more electricity than ever
Like a secret writing on the great plains.
— Jim Dolot