Sixteen lines, four verbs for the man himself, and not a single word spoken by him. Those bare materials are enough for "Poem Five: Him" to stage a whole drama about who gets to name a person, and what happens to someone when the names are wrong, or finally right.
The poem opens with the only ordinary sentence it allows: "There he sits minding / his own business." After that, the grammar tilts. Instead of "they call him Girl," we get "Girl / they call him," so the label arrives first and the speaker is named only afterwards. The line breaks sharpen this. Nearly every label ends a line on its own ("Girl," "Sister," "Ma'am," later "No," "Danger," "Quiet," then "Boy," "Dad," "Love," "Valid"), so each word hangs for a beat before we learn who said it. The effect is that of a word landing on someone before he has time to brace.
The poem moves in three steps, each closed by a small "so." The names Girl, Sister and Ma'am come first, "so he stands." Next comes a burst of commands, "Sit," "No," "Don't," "Won't," "Danger," "Quiet," "so he leaves." Finally come Safe, Boy, Dad, Love and Valid, "so he stays." His verbs are the only things he gets to do, and each is a reaction. The repeated "so" makes the poem feel almost mechanical, as if he were a figure moved by other people's words. Then the last "so" turns that around, because staying is the one action here that sounds like belonging.
The poem also distinguishes two verbs. In the first and last movements people "call" him things, which is the language of naming. In the middle they "tell" him things, which is the language of control. The names fade out and the orders take over, and the poem suggests that being mislabelled and being managed are closely related. "Sit they tell him" also sends him back to the posture he began in, but now the stillness is imposed rather than chosen.
Sound works quietly here. There is no rhyme scheme, and the repeated "they call him" and "they tell him" do the job of a refrain. The one true rhyme falls in the harshest stretch: "Don't / they tell him. Won't / they tell him." Those two refusals chime like a door closing twice. The final movement answers the earlier ones almost point for point. "Safe" meets "Danger," "Boy" and "Dad" meet "Girl" and "Sister," and "Valid" meets the run of "No," "Don't" and "Won't." Ending on "Valid" is a bold choice. It is a flat, slightly clinical word, closer to a form or a verdict than to a tender one, and its plainness makes it feel earned. After "Love," it adds the idea of being accepted as real as well as being cared for.
One detail deserves a mention: "Sister / them call him." The single "them" breaks the pattern. It may be a deliberate shift in voice or just a slip, and the text doesn't say. Either way, it makes the reader stumble over the pronoun, which suits a poem so concerned with pronouns.
That concern is what holds the poem together. Whatever the crowd calls him, the poem's own voice never wavers. The title is "Him," and the word recurs in every sentence ("call him," "tell him"), so the speaker keeps the pronoun steady while the characters in the poem fumble for labels. The imagery of Girl, Sister, Ma'am followed later by Boy and Dad suggests a man whose gender is misread and then affirmed, and I'd offer that as an inference, since the poem never states it outright. The title, with its "Poem Five," also hints at one piece in a numbered sequence, but the poem stands perfectly well alone. Its structure would suit anyone whose identity is repeatedly decided by other people.
That is what makes it significant. It shows in under a hundred words how a person can be pushed out or drawn in by vocabulary alone, and it never raises its voice to do so.