after Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street

My name means peace,
after Irene, the Greek goddess.
My family is not Greek,
but Eirene also translates
as the Hebrew shalom a word that means
hello, good-bye, peace, everything good.

When I was growing up, my name seemed short,
too few syllables, old-fashioned.
ending on a hard consonant sound, like footsteps on the floor.
I wanted a flouncy name like a ballerina,
a grand jete, a leap in a white tutu.
Girls had -ie, -y names, like Susie, Debbie.
Vowels like a swing flying high.

Friends visiting my family would sing
“Goodnight, Irene” when it was my bedtime.
I was embarrassed, I did not want to leave
the grown-up party. So I would cry.

My father was stationed in the South Pacific
for five years during the War.
My mother was living with her parents
Her father, beloved to her, said when this war ends,
if you ever have a daughter, name her Irene.
He died before I was born, but his wish was granted.

I’m okay now, humbled by two syllables
that contain a wish for the world in our unsettled
time of chaos and fear. And I have another name,
cute and airy, chosen by my grandkids.
They call me Beanie.

About the Poet

Irene Sipos earned her Master of Arts in the legendary 1970’s English Department of the University at Buffalo. She recently retired from SUNY Buffalo State where she taught in the English Department and the College Writing Program and was a co-founder of Buffalo State’s Rooftop Poetry Club.

Sipos is the author of two full-length collections of poems, Stones (2018) and Connections (2025), both released by NFB Publishing. Her work has appeared in Lilith Magazine, The Comstock Review, Earth’s Daughters, Buffalo Poets Against War, Burchfield Penney Newsletter, The Jewish Journal of Western New York, Artvoice, The Owl Light News, Buffalo News, as a Park Street Press broadside and in the anthology, A Celebration of Western New York Poets. Her chapette, Poem… and other Poems, is No.12 in the Buffalo Ochre Papers. She was a finalist in the 2004 Comstock Review Awards Issue and the 2015 Jesse Bryce Niles Chapbook Contest.

This poem appears in her new book Connections.