prompt: write a primer for dealing with your family. i like this prompt and have been using it a lot, but i am also alone without homework assignments from my writing class for the first time in a few months; i had to drop it for work, but will hopefully pick it up again soon. i miss the homework already.
Don’t look at the birth certificates
or the credit cards or the ophthalmologist’s records
Don’t trust any other permutation of four consonants and two i’s
Think before you spell.
Have nothing in common with Smiths and Laurens.
Bear the weight of spelling your surname each letter cast to an object
i as in igloo n as in nancy
of hearing it run over
mangled like a penny imperfectly positioned on steel traintracks.
Bear the compounding frustration of being interrupted at the dinner table
with a phone call
from someone who can’t say your name
selling insurance
or paper
on Yom Kippur.
Hold your torturers accountable; air the trials on cable tv, and
introduce yourself
smile twice and paint a picture when you ask someone if you have got theirs right.
my first and last names can be difficult to hear, say, and spell. i am trying to write about that.
