A couple in China wanted to name their child
after the email address symbol @, which in
Chinese is pronounced “Aita,” meaning “love him.”
The request was given an X, not for multiplication
but aka “obfuscation,” which in English is “no way.”
In Italy, I’m told, / isn’t spelled “virgule” but “Pisa,”
meaning “you can lean on me and still I shall
not fall from the weight of all that we bear.”
Then there is the everyday emoticon : -)
with its colon seeming to need hyphenation;
it’s sad how the parenthesis stands solitary
at the end without its other half to bracket
what some people translate as happiness,
that hyphen a minus sign we’re ignoring.

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Ronnie Sirmans is an award-winning headline writer whose poetry has appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, Deep South Magazine, Tar River Poetry, Gravel, and elsewhere.

Photo: Bernard Hermant