By Linda Bamber

I used to have no name-mates
but I never took my birth name back and now
two other Linda Bambers
sometimes get my mail. Texas and Kansas, I call them

to tell them apart. One is the author of a perennially best-selling textbook
on accounting; the other
wears crossed pink ribbons
in images online. I trust them both and plan
to be in touch.

If all 8 billion of us had one name
would no one ever start another war?

Nigel Smith, a pub owner in Worcestershire, England
once threw a ‘Nigel night’
expecting maybe half a dozen name-mates.
Four hundred thirty four showed up, he exulted,
              including one from Colorado
crowd-sourced for the trip.

Ni GEL, Ni GEL, Ni GEL
they all shouted
when they’d had enough beer.

All these Nigels, crowed the host,
were really keen to talk and share their lives
and come together in a kind of Nigel community.

I’m saying . . .
could you scale that up?

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Linda Bamber is Professor Emerita of English at Tufts University. Both her poetry collection, Metropolitan Tang, and her fiction collection, Taking What I Like, were published by David R. Godine, Publisher. Bamber has published in periodicals such as The Harvard Review, The Nation, Ploughshares, The New York Times Book Review, The Kenyon Review, The Florida Review, and The Missouri Review and elsewhere. She is currently writing a novella based on the cross-country expedition of Lewis and Clark.