By (An)Other

AKaiser

Prologue

A /

Alpha, Aleph, A, AK, AKA, Ahna, Ana, Ann, Anna, Anne, Anne, ma soeur Anne!, Anya, Anastasia, Anouchka, Ani, Annie, Annie-Get-Your-Gun, Annie-Bananie, Annabelle, Anna-Boo

/

(anothernameasecretikeepformyselfandmybestfrienduntilsixthgrade)

/

K /

Kaiser, Kaeser, Kayser, Keiser, Kizer, Cesar, Kaiserin, Kajzerkowski

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My name causes me trouble. All of it.

A former teacher, now friend, refuses to call me “Ana”, although I prefer it, sticks to “Anne”, with an “e”, although mine has none.

Is that Anna with one or two “n’s”?

AK: Also known as AK-47, Kalashnikov; to connoisseurs, the Kalash, a selective-fire, semi-automatic and automatic, gas-operated, 7.62 x 39mm assault rifle, able to be legally purchased in at least one US state by the toss of a driver’s license onto the counter of an every day store.

AKaiser is what I prefer for a whole name, but is it “A” then, my first name, or AKaiser, forever together?

Did I always seek a variation or only since the confluence of social media and being stalked for a good year? I need to obfuscate my name, dissimulate it.

All my initials strung together sounds like a necklace, choking.

That last name. Not even the real one. But changed neither in 1870 nor on Ellis Island.

Oh, Kaiser, like Cesar? Oh, like Wilhelm? Oh, like Kaiser rolls, like Permanente?

If I ask if I am late: No, and anyway, you don’t have to be so German about it.

My political import poems? Panzer-like.

My physical ailments? In the words of a doctor I have for a day at Union Square: Maybe you were a Nazi in a former life.

The blood tests he ordered raises an eyebrow of the phlebotomist: Are you sure he wanted this much blood?

The blank sunny walk home.

The collapse into bed.

My brain a nest of void for hours on end.

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Epilogue

What I like: each part global, hardly ever an oar away from sea.