Some things worth remembering

That I have this space to write when I need it (I need it).

That the name of the town in Chile where you can stand on the beach next to TC and it's so dark that all you see is foam from the waves like milk and stars, milk and stars, is Puerto Saavedra, and that even though you told TC that and he never said anything he still clearly heard you, has been hearing you all along.

That it's OK to break down a little bit.

That it won't always make any sense: a parent can be there for you for all the cuts and scrapes and bruises and college freak-outs and still just get up and walk away with it, or sort of walk away from it, like a body leaving its head behind.

That waves and waves of people have come to California to leave their history behind. Why are you always looking for it everywhere?

That justice is undeconstructible, even Derrida said so.

That newborns need to be burped. There are many quiet, manual tasks that they require, and they sleep on you too. It's work, but it's also a strange and special kind of space.

That I have no idea how to "monetize" this blog, but thanks for asking.

That the air above your sleeping son's forehead is as holy as the rain. I stole that, but it's also true.
posted by Adam at 1:51 AM [edit]

Santiago at Night

All day they've been self-consciously buying
first world shoes, slipping out of the first world
office and into a coffee bar. Now it's night, there are
French films and Iranian films at the old theater,
the pedestrian passages are almost empty. A first
world exhaustion overcomes the cooling footprints.
In Santiago, the night belongs to the yellow buses,
the guy who sells peanuts and candy bars, the maids
returning home from a clean house. In the theater
I watch a movie about Afghanistan, a place without
the shoes and offices we have here. It is night,
the theater is closing, the place is exhausted
from a day spent knocking on the door of other worlds.
posted by Adam at 2:53 PM [edit]

The Gringo Corridor

More than any other city I’ve lived in, Santiago feels like a living being. That’s not necessarily a good thing: Often I feel like it’s working in opposition to me.

When you’re a “norteamericano” like me, Santiago is always pushing you down its Gringo Corridor. Need to change money or renew your visa? Go downtown, or to Providencia. Walk down Avenida 11 de Septiembre, named by Pinochet to celebrate the day of the military coup in 1973. Nothing you need could possibly be in the blonde-free zones of Lo Espejo, Pudahuel, or Maipu. Even in middle-class Nunoa, I discover that I can’t get an apartment without buying my own stove or refrigerator. For “extranjeros”, I’m told, Providencia and Las Condes are easier, with their high-rises multiplying like shiny hairs on Santiago’s head. Some days I push up against Santiago and try to resist. Other days I give up and walk the same path I’ve traveled too many times already.

I know that the Gringo Corridor is part of the legacy of dictatorship: Pinochet actively consolidated the slums to keep them under police control, and during his rule new oases of wealth also appeared. Santiago became a city of invisible walls. Left-leaning friends are always telling me how much better this city was before Pinochet: less traffic, less smog to block the view of the mountains, the people friendlier and less depressed. They’ve even told me the food had more flavor—don’t tease me, I say! If everything they said were true, pre-coup Santiago was a socialist Disneyland. But something doesn’t add up.

That’s the problem: I feel like I’m being lied to on every side. Pinochet’s Gringo Corridor is a lie Chile has maintained even in democracy, to convince foreign investors (and Chileans themselves) that everything’s moving forward, forward, forward. But nostalgia is a lie too—a lie that makes its teller only seem more lonely.

I’m determined to keep pushing against the lies, and against Santiago, until I get through the curtains to the truth—or, more likely, to a city of different truths hiding below, or through, or past this city of lies.

posted by Adam at 6:16 PM [edit]

The Valentines of Lines
for Amanda, written February 14

Some guys buy chocolates for their lovers,
and though I know you’d like that, I think mole
would more appropriately express my feeling for you—
a hundred different flavors that bake and boil
but come out with one unmistakable taste. You’d eat it,
while I watched you, with “Cucurrucucu Paloma” fading
from the stereo as it stepped into our heads. I’d have
a little box of air for you from Mexico—evening
in Taxco with the beggar kids, tamale vendors
of Oaxaca, and the Piaxtlans making romance into cumbia.
You know I’d only buy you gifts from the informal economy,
if I could. Who’s your favorite architect? I’ll have her
build a house for you, me, and our comics collection.
When I draw with you, or draw while thinking of you, I start
to see the valentines of lines all around me. First panel:
We’re flying home from Mexico, and you’re sleeping
on my arm. I’d love to hear your lovely snore.
Next panel: I stop calling my other friends when I come
to town to see you. All the empty word balloons
sit by the phone. The final panel, where I get to know you better,
is repeated over and over. It’s stuck on the Xerox machine,
which is going apeshit, because we’re on top of it,
with the valentines of lines, making love.

posted by Adam at 12:34 PM [edit]

I have been in hotels where the view was painted
on the wall. I have followed the rhyme of your hands
to a museum where you explained your art
in a language I didn't understand. All these places I have been.

I have swallowed my own cries as the silver screen
brought my fears to life. I have opened a book and drowned
in its ocean. I have spoken bubbles in the pages
of comic books. All these dreams I have had.

When the record is broken there is no music,
and its threads are like an alphabet abandoned
at the bottom of a tomb when the kingdom collapsed.
When the orphans stole all the homes from the families.

Or in the nightmare I'm creating for you right now
in the museum of your hidden art. In love,
which also collapses, like a mirror on top of a mirror,
leaving infinite worlds that cannot stop dividing.
posted by Adam at 1:29 PM [edit]

In response to this article… http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/01/international/europe/01EURO.html

To the Editor:

Re: "Europeans to Exempt U.S. from War Court" (news article, Oct. 1):

The European Union’s decision to exempt American soldiers and government officials from prosecution for war crimes at the International Criminal Court is not a “compromise,” it is a capitulation. A court that grants immunity to a specific class of persons breaks one of the fundamental rules of democracy: that we are all equal before the law. To understand this point we need only look at Latin American countries such as Chile, where exiting dictatorial governments granted themselves immunity from prosecution. The specter of unanswered human rights abuses haunts these countries to this day.

How can we expect that the “Milosevics and Pinochets of tomorrow” (whom I desperately wish to see on trial) will submit to the judgment of an institution that has already given up part of its jurisdiction in order to placate one nation? An International Criminal Court that exempts anyone from prosecution based solely on nationality is neither “international” nor a “court”: it is a stage on which to act out an undemocratic farce of justice.

Adam Rosenblatt
posted by Adam at 11:19 AM [edit]

And?

It was the best day of my week: ice cream
on my cheek, no curfew, and only
the moon between me and Mars.
It was the best goddam day.

Scratch that. It was the day of this week.
It was beautiful, you were sort of, and
there was a lot to listen to. It was fat
and I was still short.

This week it was today. All week.
I'd wake up thinking today at last
will be tomorrow and no, it was
still just the best goddam day.

Tomorrow it will be beautiful. But it
won't sound like today. You will,
sort of. It's been that kind of week.
Scratch that.

Between the moon and Mars lies today.
And I'll still pick you up tomorrow for ice cream,
if you want it. I've been wanting it
all goddam week. Again.
posted by Adam at 12:38 AM [edit]

The machinist's house

In the machinist's house the wheels turn the day to dust:
gone the apple I ate down to its core, gone the slow
march of the preschool kids to their pool, the water
tossed up and falling down again to wet the machinist's
wheels. I don't even know you
anymore.

In the machinist's house you spend all day
making a migraine, you cure your wounds
with salt just so we'll believe you (as if
we ever didn't). I don't even know you,
but I'll call you for ice cream if you're
crying.

The machinist and his machine. He's proud
of it, you know, especially when we all
come over to see it. With all its leather
straps and the butterflies crushed
inside it. I almost lost a finger to it,
or a tune, or a life. Almost. I was
saved.

In the machinist's house I'll come
to see you when you're dead,
I'll bury flowers in your grave
and keep your body lying
in the open. I'll keep any
part of you alive, my tears are
water.
posted by Adam at 12:28 AM [edit]

Letter to the New York Times:

To the Editor:

In pondering the possible economic impacts of an US invasion of Iraq ("$6 or $60," Op-Ed, July 31), Thomas Friedman writes, "give me sustained $10-a-barrel oil and I'll give you revolutions from Iran to Saudi Arabia, and throw in Venezuela." When we "throw in Venezuela" we find that he has crossed a very important line: Has Mr. Friedman forgotten that Venezuela is a democracy?

Though we may not like Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, the fact remains that he was freely elected with massive popular support in a country more democratic than either of the other two OPEC countries Friedman mentions. This year, the Bush administration has already been embarrassed by its failure to condemn (and alleged encouragement of) an undemocratic attempted coup in Venezuela, and more recently by its overt attempts to influence elections in Bolivia, where candidate Evo Morales opposes some portions of US drug war strategy in his country.

The US has a long enough, and dirty enough, history of backing undemocratic regime change in Latin America, almost always at the cost of civilian bloodshed and a loss of freedoms. For Mr. Friedman to casually toss off the suggestion that we catalyze the destruction of yet another democratically-elected government in the region is simply irresponsible. Let Chavez lose an election.

posted by Adam at 11:46 PM [edit]

Horror

You look as if you've seen a ghost: a bright little leprechaun
of sleep who paddles out the door when the light comes in.
I know you find my aversion to horror a bit too much--it's as if
I were painting the walls always some compulsive shade of white--
but I assure you I can accept horror when it has meaning, I just
reject it as an aesthetic, as I reject stucco, or superheroes
who carry guns. I know I have already written this before,
but I'd like to tell everyone just one more time--gather round now--
about the drive home from the movie. About the music, the air
conditioner, the city and the lights. Oh, I've forgotten how to tell
it right already, but I was keeping it for all of you. You bright souls,
who sniff at hayfever season and have offered me sweaters when I am
cold. Another poem to the young past, another all emptied of any horror.
I suppose it must seem fake. I'll tell you what is fake: the fucking and the running
on your video screen, the eager hero and the blood. That is fake, and then we
make tea. I have no aversion to horror, it's an aversion to bullshit horror:
explosions without blood, military without oppression, naked without sex.
And we all walk out in a little line from the picture show, and the movie crumbles
as the world dawns in all its aching sun-filled horror before our beloved feet.
posted by Adam at 1:06 AM [edit]

Fresco

You just gone I go over to your place
and sniff at all the clothing. And everything
is so just started, with maybe tomorrow Mexico
and maybe the next day the whole world.
We'll be together then.

I'm not so triste en los ojos. If they
come to your place, and find all the pictures,
they'll have to put together a good story:
This is when we attacked the frescoes in Rome.
This is when I cultivated sugar for your body.

Maybe tomorrow in Mexico we'll carve the shadows
into prettier shapes. One of them could be my father,
too tall like you, explaining icicles to whomever will listen.
One of them could be your sister, out of harm's way.

I go over to your place and your neighbor thinks
I am an intruder. Which I am. I am worming my way
into your plans for tomorrow. Maybe the whole world.
I won't sleep until I know you'll come with me,
and take only what carry-on baggage

makes a good story, or helps us on our way,
or looks beautiful tumbling down a waterfall
as we stand above, laughing at gravity's hold
on all the things we've lived as they fall.
posted by Adam at 1:47 AM [edit]

Best Supporting Adam

I have always been a bit afraid
of the darker side of the carnival,
where you turn from dog into horse
and gallop golden down the track
to a prize that is made of lies.

I wonder if it's woth giving up
what we keep holden: the safety
of home, the rye, the timidest cheeks.
In this tent we pay admission, we wait,
we wonder what will happen before we
emerge on the other side. Sweating.

I am content to be the Best Supporting Adam
and leave you in the lead. I am afraid
of chasing after fallen change. And you
in the window is not you. And you can
somehow cease to own your name.

The timidest cheeks are wet with Heaven.
The hand upon them dries them, and makes them old.
posted by Adam at 11:53 AM [edit]

A letter to Professor Diana Fox at Bridgewater State College in Massachussetts.
The letter of hers that I refer to was a response to Stan Lee's Op-Ed in the Times
about the universality of his Spider-Man character. She points out that, though Spidey's
costume completely covers his face and thus leaves him raceless, it is not gender-neutral
and thus excludes girls from identifying with the hero. She also complained about Spidey's
"all-American" costume in this age of "anti-American rallies around the world."

Dear Professor Fox,

I just read your letter in the New York Times regarding Spider-Man's
supposed "universality." As both a comics artist and a political
progressive, I was affected by your words.

Your point about gender is an important one. The machismo of the super-hero
world not only keeps girls from identifying with "superheroic" qualities; in
addition, as Scott McCloud points out in his fantastic book "Understanding
Comics," the lack of comics with female appeal actually robs the comic book
world of half of its potential talent pool, year after year, as girls turn
away from comics to more inviting pursuits. One of the many reasons why
comics has yet to achieve the status that film or novels have is that far
too many voices are excluded not only from the stories themselves but from
the talent pool that creates them.

As for your point about Spider-Man and anti-Americanism, however, I fear you
may not have read enough Spidey comics. Superman and Captain America not
only claim to somehow symbolize the soul of America; more importantly, they
also both (despite having fought the Nazis in comic book pages throughout
World War II) embody an uncomfortably semi-fascist aesthetic of human
perfection. Though Spider-Man's costume may be red and blue, in all other
respects he is almost an anti-Superman, and that's precisely why he changed
the comics world so much when he appeared. Far from invincible, Spider-Man
also wallows in a world of frighteningly complex moral debate.
Unfortunately for old Spidey, nothing is ever quite so simple as "Truth,
Justice, and the American Way." Hounded by the press and mistrusted even by
those whose lives he saves, Spider-Man is very much a New Yorker, but not
much of a super-patriot.

Though I've always loved Batman more, I think that in this particularly
complex and grievous time in world politics, Spider-Man's ongoing
self-criticism and moral debate, along with his anguish over the possibility
of that his superhero life will endanger innocents and loved ones (I wish that
the architects of the US war in Afghanistan had shown half of Spider-Man's
concern for civilian casualties), may make him the right hero for the moment.

I applaud your taking a critical eye to the world of comic books: we need it
badly. But, please, don't say "it's just a comic." Comics may have a long
way to go towards diversity and inclusion, but undervaluing the
medium--which has as much inherent potential for storytelling as any other
medium--only places obstacles in the path, and perpetuates the culture of
mediocrity that currently holds the mainstream comics world hostage.

Sincerely,

Adam Rosenblatt
Austin, TX
adam.rosenblatt@aya.yale.edu
posted by Adam at 11:02 AM [edit]

Worried angels looking down

Jaime was looking down on you at the bottom
of the staircase as he said goodbye and got quick
the hell off the phone: too late. I heard you say hello.

I'd like to walk a bit with Merry and Pippin, to see perhaps
a bearded tree or the coldest water. I'd like to walk accompanied,
but for once alone in my thoughts of you, and to have no one ask
about that which is unrelated to our quest. There are, after all,

so many worried angels looking down. They see you at the landing,
they see me trying to save my choking friends. How do they ever
find any comfort on cloud-shaped pillows, with a view like that?

I'm doing the best that I can. I won't call till maybe June maybe. I'd like
to walk a bit with Merry and Pippin, and to understand their hearts,
which haven't appeared as of yet in the book. I'd like to drink the coldest water,
so cold it burns a bit going down, and lie under an enchanted tree.

Jaime was looking down at you and your new boyfriend maybe. He got the hell
off the phone too late. I'd like to drink the coldest water, hear you say hello,
and frozen inside from what I'd sipped I'd say nothing back. There are, after all,
so many worried angels looking down. And I'm doing the best that I can.
posted by Adam at 1:40 AM [edit]

Playa Bagdad

The salt of Mexican beaches came off you easy once you had given me the chance.
All my luck is everywhere: Playa Bagdad, Matamoros and ice cream, the long return
in a green automobile just to get sand stuck in the sheets. This is crazy, can't you see
that this is completely crazy? The sun had never gotten so high, the barbecue so everywhere,
the records so lost underneath the bed. My life was supposed to be in New England,
not in this crazy place, not diving into a wave and coming up again to find you,
and to be so lucky and so lost. And then to fall accidentally asleep, freshly-showered,
a package brought from one life onto this strange, burnt, kissed piece of shore.
posted by Adam at 1:58 AM [edit]

You want things so forgotten

“At the hill’s foot Frodo found Aragorn, standing still and silent as a tree; but in his hand was a small golden bloom of elanor, and a light was in his eyes. He was wrapped in some fair memory: and as Frodo looked at him he knew he beheld things as they once had been in the same place.” –J.R.R. Tolkien

You want things so forgotten:
you are never telling them to stay.
The husky wind upon the branches,
the boastful breaking of the day.

You want to look up and say,
“Ah, those days were simple.
Those days will never come again.”
While I stand with my sole upon the soil:

digging, digging. You want things to unlock
themselves, to fall like parts of zippers made in
a factory in New Jersey. I want to nail them together--
ugly, unfunctional--and go with them across the sea.

You want things so forgotten. You want to call the moon
just the moon, as if it had never lit us in our wet walks
around the lake. You want the scent to die out
from your sweater. You want a lie to be forgiven,

for it is careful lying that turns one day into another,
and without it we’d just stop. Like photos, burned
by a magnifying glass onto tattoo skin. Like the lights
of a city that have forgotten to wink. Like a night

that never ends, and keeps plunging onward, down the dark hillside,
across the aching ocean, up the vinyl siding, into the open window,
through your unbelief, past your dental improvements, and down
your dark gullet. In that darkness it is unforgotten,

but you keep it secret, like a dream.

posted by Adam at 11:01 AM [edit]

Silent film

Can you see how on screen they are asking us to die?
Can you the see the silent smiles on their backs?
It was I who called you yesterday and hung up
and didn’t even think about calling back. I wouldn’t
like to talk. On screen they are asking for a dance

and I am missing the right clothes. The horse and carriage
are waiting in the hallway, improper, and the chandelier
is in the wine cellar. Flooded, just the way I remember us.
I didn’t even think, “Perhaps I should call back.” I just left
the phone on the desk in the room in the mansion which was
all black and white and painted. I wouldn’t have liked to talk.

The time has come for a duel. It is I unarmed and the little kid
sister from the first pastoral scene. She’s going to kill me for not
loving you enough, because misunderstandings are common like that
in film. Foul misunderstanding! I loved you so much I coughed reels
onto the cutting room floor and was laid up for weeks in a velvet robe.
Just like the silent film: though I did in fact call, I wouldn’t have liked to talk.
posted by Adam at 10:26 AM [edit]

To: Paul Krugman
The New York Times

Dear Mr. Krugman,

I am an avid reader of your column in the Times and personally appreciate your expertise in showing how liberal politics make economic sense. As a student of Latin America, I also depend on your analysis of events like the ones that took place recently in Argentina, and the influence of international capital and monetary institutions in the collapse of their economy.

I do feel that in your column today, "The Angry People" (Op-Ed, April 23), you have mischaracterized Nader voters as you draw parallels between recent elections in the United States and France. Presumably referring both to left-wing challengers of France's Lionel Jospin and, by association, to Mr. Nader, you mention "left-wing candidates... who have no chance of winning, but are engaged in politics as theater." I have seen similar formulations before and find them condescending to voters; the "theater" analogy seems to implicate an "audience" of voters, but the fact is that voters--even those of us who vote for a candidate we know will not win--are more active than the average audience in a play, because at the end of the show we cast a ballot. Otherwise we would not come out in the first place. The fact remains, despite many mischaracterizations by angry Democrats, that no one was duped or seduced into voting for Nader. The conscious, and for me quite painful, decision not to vote Democrat was made because of my perception that on many issues, but most particularly on campaign finance, both parties had compromised our democracy to a point that was simply unallowable. You may defend the parties by pointing out that Congress recently passed the soft-money ban, but I am sure that as an economist you know even better than I the extent to which that ban is a drop in the bucket, and the degree to which businesses--not voters--are now the "constituents" of many candidates on both sides of the aisle.

Of course I and Nader voters everywhere mourn the fact that Bush was selected by the Supreme Court to be our president. Mr. Nader is not perfect, especially not when he misleadingly asserts that Bush and Gore are two of a kind. We have learned all too well in recent months that they are indeed not so similar. But I remind you before you lump Nader in with the "silly leftists" on the ballot in France that to this day Mr. Nader has done more during his career to shape the way we live in America than either Mr. Bush or Mr. Gore, probably more than they ever will do. I also remind you that Gore's platform, unlike Mr. Jospin's in France, was not in fact "slightly left-of-center." To call it so is to allow the right-wingers in Congress, whom you so rightly criticize in today's column, to define the American political spectrum more than they should. Gore was, at best, a centrist candidate, with a running mate who until the campaign began was a supporter of school vouchers, an idea that abandons our government's commitment to improving public education. And I think noone deserves to be called "left-of-center" until he or she admits the basic need for universal healthcare. Mr. Nader, for all his flaws, stands for all these things which to so many of us voters are so basic, and so shocking to find the Democrats willing to compromise on.

I look forward to continuing to read your column, which both informs and provokes me. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Adam Rosenblatt
posted by Adam at 11:25 AM [edit]

It must have meant the world to him because he held it in his palm,
hand inside his pocket, and got so mad when you threw him in the pool.

If you come into the kitchen you'll find us all here laughing--
why can't you come in?

On the way over here I swear I saw a triceratops on the front lawn,
and as I stared it grew and grew as quickly as we have.

The little kids have started to come into our lives, turning over
every pot and licking quickly all the cookies to claim them as their own.
Are you ready for this?

The lights are standing solid above the lake, and the sound of bed
spreads out across the floor like a blanket falling from a very great height.
It must mean the world to me: I hold it tight as I say goodbye.
posted by Adam at 11:32 PM [edit]

Another one to the New York Times:

To the Editor:

Re "Documents Show Energy Official Met Only With Industry Leaders" (front page, March 27):

White House press secretary Ari Fleisher says, "News flash--no surprise to anybody, the secretary of energy meets with energy-related groups." But in fact Secretary Abraham met with only one type of "energy-related group": energy industry executives and their lobbyists. He ignored the perspectives of environmental and consumer groups, and the scientists they work with.

From its recent efforts to get Mr. Arafat to the Arab summit in Beirut, the Bush administration has made it clear that it understands that policy--and peace--cannot be made without having all sides of the debate at the table. So why are we Americans being asked to swallow an energy policy that was crafted with unilateral input from people whose profits depend on it?

The energy policy is a sham. The condescending and disingenuous statement from Ari Fleisher, along with the Energy Department's hoarding of documents, is an insult to all Americans, environmentalist or not, who believe that in a democracy the public is owed some transparency--and a voice--in the shaping of policy that affects each one of us.

Adam Rosenblatt
Austin, TX
posted by Adam at 10:39 AM [edit]

Stealing postage

This is how we'll do it: you run in with the package
and I'll start singing something ugly while you
use the postal stamp machine
to make it appear that we have paid our postage
to send this package, this package we have carefully filled
with unused postage stamps.
posted by Adam at 12:37 AM [edit]

A door between them and the night

Close it gently, now. All the little wanderers are asleep,
in the rags you sewed for them. Age is upon them,
combing their hair, waiting patiently for all the lies
they will have to hear before they make it to tomorrow.

There is just a door between them and the night.
You'd stand watch all the hours long if you didn't need
to sleep yourself, if you could be two: sun and darkly moon.
There is a door in the night, and you go through it to day

And then wake up again. There are lies on your hands,
curled up in the morning, breaking open their pleasant mouths.
All the little wanderers have gone to breakfast. There is a door
in the day, and you go through it fearlessly, thinking how

you will save them all, you will lie them all, you will tie them up
and take them away through the many doors of the night
and the one violent door into day.
posted by Adam at 4:44 PM [edit]

This many words could have snowed

A lot of what we've been taught to love comes pre-packaged with sugar--it's the best buy for your Spanish-speaking eyes. I remember walking on the worst winter night from Colin's house to your house through the snow. I was afraid of you, and a virgin still. A lot of what we have been taught to love is unfinished, and yet we throw our loyalty at it like an unpoisonous snake. A lot of what we love is dead already, and exists only in architecture. I remember running into a bathroom to find you there vomiting away what scared you. I thought medical attention could save you. You were already saving yourself. I'm glad. I'm also out of the picture. A lot of what we have been taught to love is still sneaking around inside me. A lot of it is also lost.
posted by Adam at 1:35 PM [edit]

How's my driving?

There should be a late-night store that sells The Catcher in the Rye.
Rows and rows of the neat little white cover with its most austere rainbow,
all crying "Allie, Allie, Allie" into the neon night. I stop inside and pick up
a copy for you. Perfect fit in the pocket. So how's my driving?

There should be a way to keep telling you the things I think
without ever calling. On Saturday I was in a pool. On Sunday
it rained. And each weekend passes like this, filling the histories
of the new with odds and ends of little importance.

How's my driving? I try to keep an eye on the road but sometimes
it fills up and I find I'm crying "Allie, Allie, Allie," back at the car stereo.
Or sometimes I'm just sick. It's a miracle to have seen you in your shoes.

Those late, late nights. They don't come around anymore; I don't
wake up to you and fall back asleep. I just wake up. And in the morning
my hands are empty at the sheets. In the morning the water pours
into another shy day. There should be late-night stores

that sell only The Catcher in the Rye, the books saying over and over
how much they miss everything. How's my driving? How long are you planning
to waste all of this? There should be a way to keep telling you all the things I think

without ever calling.
posted by Adam at 12:03 AM [edit]

Welcome back day

Welcome back to the country from wherever you've been.
I'm sure the sugar was even sweeter. Welcome back
says my voice tripled on the airport speakers until it
gives way to the other voices of people you still know.
Somewhere out on the plain the prince strings berries
on a pole and casts them at the sky as if he were fishing.
Maybe he'll bring down a bird. Maybe he's crying after airplanes.
Every little bit of text in his pocket is aching to break free.
Every green frog in the field says welcome, welcome, though they
don't know why and they don't know who. Not anymore. My voice
on the airport speakers is concerned for your security. My voice
underwater is calling, calling, into the deep and emptiest sea.
posted by Adam at 1:02 AM [edit]

This is the beginning of no other week, which is why the prince
saddles his horse and goes out by the river, where all the adjectives
hang limp from the reeds to defy description. In this place the prince
builds a fort for the arrival of the barbarians, but he builds it alone,
letting no peasant or laborer come help him. He builds it brightly,
barking, rolling the sun off his back. He is convinced that this is the week
they are coming, yet he alone shall see them as they sneak their undivided
shadows into the peace of his kingdom. The people will not know of them
until they are in their midst, conquering by sword and kiss. They will spring
crazy all over his kingdom's peaceful winter. This fort might just stop them,
built as it is with all the dead adjectives of a place that lives in the past.
The prince works until his hands can lift no more, and then he lies atop his fort
and sleeps. At that twilight hour, the fort standing intimidating and large, the guard
not yet set, the barbarians creep in on greying shadows and kiss the prince as they pass
into his fine kingdom, all the delight of havoc written large across their lips.
posted by Adam at 12:43 PM [edit]

This is not a letter, it's much more like a dream.
I'm driving from San Antonio to Austin, marvelling
at the idea that skin could be a country. Make
the taco stands light up at night. A yawn to get
us across the bridge and to get us lost.

I leave every time he comes around. The summer
is hidden somewhere in this spring; did you see it
shining out dangerous from the chrome? Did you
hear it spank the sidewalk? The summer is hiding
and only some of us know where to find it.
posted by Adam at 4:36 PM [edit]

Letter to the New York Times

To the Editor:

Re: "More Applicants Answer the Call for Teaching Jobs" (front page, Feb.11).

I recently met a number of Teach for America teachers working in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, in Starr County, which is the poorest county in the U.S. Though I have already given a year of service to that same community as an Americorps volunteer, I was inspired by the level of commitment and hard work these teachers were putting into their two-year stint.

I, however, like many of the people quoted in the article, wonder how many of these peers of mine will remain teachers for the rest of their careers. While President Bush has promised many times to "leave no child behind," in the wake of September 11 he has done more for the defense industry than for teachers' salaries. Teaching is our most important profession and the one most oriented towards the future. It should be attracting our best and brightest during recession and in good times. After all, it is teachers, not fighter planes, who have the power to leave no child behind.


posted by Adam at 3:18 PM [edit]

Pageant day

On the deck, listening to life's rich pageant, with only tejano radio
and the dogs whip whipping themselves into packs for competition.
No, I don't want to hang out.

An all-night dj at the break of the morning. Without a voice.
A spectacular contest of beauty, which only time and today
can ever win. No, I don't want to hang out.

The tip of Texas. The water that runs down your cheek when you drink.
I don't want to hang out, but I want to race all the way to the finish
and find again there nothing, nothing, nothing.

No, I don't want to hang out.

Hey, blue. This Saturday is almost like New England, with stranger
and brighter corners. This song is almost like the one I listened to before.
The waves of it are all the same, but it's swimming in a different ocean.

No, I don't want to hang out. Will you come over?
posted by Adam at 12:31 PM [edit]

The wizard tree
part two

The prince stood and looked at the gravel on his hands and saw no tree. His shadow branched out from his feet as he saw no tree. The shadow of his hair rustled like leaves, and still no tree. He spread out his fingers, and in his shadow they twigged forth from his arms. "Only one tree grows above the treeline." Make it yourself.

He looked down. "Wizard tree?" he said.

His shadow bloomed out across the entire rocky summit. Its branches multiplied and divided; its leaves added and forgot to subtract. "Yes, prince," it said in the shadow of his own voice.

"I come bearing a question."

"As do all who come to me," it replied. "For if they know the answer already they never find me."

The prince stood silent.

"You ask a question on behalf of your people," said the wizard tree.

"No." The prince hung his head, a little, and glanced again at the gravel on his hands.

"You ask a question to prevent a war."

"No," said the prince.

"You ask a question about the hunger."

"No," said the prince. "Those days are gone, tree, when kings and princes were certain enough of their own feet in their boots that they could go on quests on behalf of others. I come to you with nothing but my own uncertainty."

"Then ask your lonely question," said the tree.

"Well," said the prince, with no gravel on his hands. "I want to know..." He trailed off.

"Yes?"

"How does it live?"

"What?"

"I said, 'How does it live?' "

"How does what live?" The tree was irritated: it was not supposed to be the one asking questions.

"It, all of it. The horse I rode here on. That foul woodchuck. Me. The land. How does it live?"

"Ah, so you, like so many before you, have come asking for proof of God. For greater meaning."

"Not really," said the prince. "For that is the answer to why we live. I want to know how, for I find that much more interesting."

"So you seek the inner workings of the universe, the story of breathing itself."

"No, not quite," said the prince, "For that is a mechanics. You can tell me that the ball rolls because I pushed it, and that is the answer to why. You can tell me that it rolls because of its shape, and that is the physics of it. I just want to know how it rolls, or, in the case of the horse, how it lives. For a horse does not live simply because it has lungs and a heart and a brain. Those are its mechanics. And though God may have created it, it does not live in God alone for it would then become God, and the reason for its being a horse would disappear. One of the elements of the horse is that it is not God. So what, beyond its mechanics and its creator, makes it live? As a horse? Every day?" He looked down into the valley below. "And this entire land, that we can see so widely from here. How does it live? "

The wizard tree flicked the smallest ends of its smallest leaves in the wind. For a long time the prince just looked at his baby-clean palms.

"Did you come a long way to get here?" said the wizard tree, suddenly sounding much less wizardly, even a bit tired .

"Yes, I did," said the prince.

All the shadow leaves sighed down a bit on the breeze and some even fell, though of course when a shadow falls we never know where it goes. "Well, that is most unfortunate, prince," said the tree.

"How so?" asked the prince.

"Because I am a shadow of tree, and a shadow of a voice. I know many things, but I do not live. You have asked me the only question that I cannot answer. You, in fact, are the one answering it."

"But I'm not, tree. I don't know the answer. I ask you because I don't know. I am told that I am the ruler of this land, but I don't understand it. How can I rule over what I don't understand?" He looked up from the tree to the sky. Just then the sun made its disappearance under the trees, and the moon was not yet up: that one moment when neither sun with its fire-sword nor moon with its heartbreak knife can carve shadows out from reality. He sighed. He looked down again.

At that one moment when neither sun nor moon can carve shadows out from reality, in this story that is so true to so few, he looked down--and had no shadow. The wizard tree was gone. The rocks projected their grayness into the graying sky. And everywhere he looked, he saw doubt: that secret thing worse than shame and worse than knowledge in casting us down upon our own earth.

The prince walked down the opposite side of the mountain from whence he came, and every one of his steps was an answer, in a language he could never understand.

posted by Adam at 10:31 PM [edit]

The wizard tree
not part two, but a strange little pause in the middle

The mountains are galloping out into the plains.
Why do they want to be like animals, when they are
so much older, quieter, kinder?

The sea is not reflecting the sun so much as punting it back
into the sky. Why does it want to be a ball player,
when it is so much deeper, darker, undrinkable?

How does it live?

The wind tickles like hair passing over a belly
that has snuck out beneath its shirt.
Why does it want to be like lovers, when it is so
satisfied with nothing, so necessary, so immune to loss?

The trees are holding it inside
their branches as long as they can.
Why do they want to be like children,
when they are so much firmer,
more trustworthy, believable?

How do they live?
posted by Adam at 12:51 AM [edit]

Triste, en los ojos

See a scary movie and think about what you've lost:
it's all in word balloons spread out before you. Here's
where I said "I'm tired"; here's where I said, "Lay here long."
Triste en los ojos. When the moths come out at night,
don't pretend to know anything about them, except that
their night is long and their search never ends,
as yours could have, had my hands been given the chance.
Don't think about what you've lost. Collect the cards
of other people you might call. Don't wear a dress for them too.
One time I was in another country. You were kind enough
to call. One time I was in Atlantis. You stood with a fishing
rod and called called called. One time I was at your doorstep.
I stood there a long time, triste en los ojos. I stood until my feet
hurt and then I left. Don't think about what you've lost.
posted by Adam at 12:40 AM [edit]

Vow

When you were little we were always forgetting you in the back seat.
Now you're older, trying to find ways to explain the natural world
better than the people around you, better than me: It is green.
Rain is wet. I wish you'd learn to see the thing beneath the thing.

Oh, and also, I left the door open in case you weren't coming back.
Just to catch a little wind. It's almost time to kill magic again.
Like you used to when I'd walk into the room dressed up for no occasion.
All scared to ever die and wanting not to take you with me.

This is the beautiful summer that only we have ever known. This is tragic:
the only person on Earth who hasn't seen the rain is the one who makes it.
Try explaining that one in a shitty little notebook. Oh, and also: I'm not
angry. The moon is telling you lies. I'm not angry, I'm not angry.
posted by Adam at 6:42 PM [edit]

The danger room

It is late, I am cold, and the whole reason I stayed in tonight was to get some sleep. But let me try to get this down as best I can under the circumstances.

In the past few days two acquaintances have spoken to me about their journalism work. And I have suddenly realized that I have very little desire to write news. Though I admire the work of those writer-detectives who find all the relevant facts and then present them in shining words to the public, their particular talent is not mine, nor is their passion.

I want to write about art. Movies, albums, plays, comics, graffiti, you name it. Why do I want to write about art? Because art is the world. Scratch that. Art is the worlds.

Since I was little, since I made my bed into a spaceship at night and whispered to my stuffed animals about engaging the hyperdrive and what planets we were visiting, it has always seemed apparent to me that the point of art is to create a whole world. The comic books and fantasy novels I spent most of my time reading formalized this process: you always start a fantasy novel with a map. That map says Here, here is the world I am talking about. Sadness is in the West, in the land of Drakmoor or something. Hope is in the East, where the Emerald such-and-such awaits the touch of its proper owner, Prince so-and-so. The comic books are the same: the Fortress of Solitude, the Bat Cave, and my personal favorite place-metaphor, the X-Men's Danger Room. This is the room where you face dangers that you yourself have created, and have willed to challenge you, by entering and turning on the machine. This is where you face peril but you also "train" to be who you want to be (and to figure out which costume best suits you). This is the danger room. This is growing up.

Then I started reading Big Kids' books and the technique got more subtle, but the point was the same. Every book is the creation of a reality, a reality that has emotional, political, spiritual, and comic dimensions. Sure, some of the books are based on real life events. Some might just be about one country, or one year, or even one day. But they are still a world, because the selection itself--along with the writer's language--says what is the Earth's core, and what is its sky and stars. It has always annoyed me when people would say a painting was "about" this or "about" that--it's not "about" anything, it is the thing. The Yo La Tengo album, And then nothing turned itself inside out, is not "about" Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley's marriage. It is their marriage, in microcosm, in a world where they have decided that the slow scrape of a metal brush along the top of a drum is the sound of nervously falling in love, that the high tinkling of keyboard notes can mean a stupid misunderstanding.

Writing my thesis about Chilean writers taught me that the biggest charge I get is in traveling. Not traveling to Chile--though I did love that--but traveling through a world that has been created by art. I want to be a travel writer of fictional worlds.

I want to interrupt my own thought process that only I care about anyway to say that the best thing about R.E.M. was, and now only very occasionally is, the ways in which it is like your favorite old t-shirt: familiar, yet every time you put it on you are somehow re-surprised by its softness, its fit. It certainly lacks the exciting new-clothes smell and sheen of the shirt you just bought, the one you might wear on the first day of school. But there is a relationship between you and this old t-shirt that is not fully perceived from the outside, and thus is a deeper relationship than the one you have with the new shirt. Just as you always thought that R.E.M. lines like, "Please find my harbourcoat, I can't go outside without it" and, more recently, "I'd have done anything to hear you speak of it," had some meaning that only you could see. You knew that even your best friend, even Colin, was seeing some other vision than you when he listened to "Country Feedback." His version was valid, and important to him, and even shared some territory with your own, but of course it was not quite so true as your little understanding, the little psychic conversation you alone were having with Michael Stipe. And of course Colin felt exactly that way too.

So that's why I'm going to write about art. Because it really, really matters to me--even if to some it is far less imporant than the news--that R.E.M. is like an old t-shirt, that if you dig under the soil in any poem by Sharon Olds you find a deep and permanent sea, that every day in their writings my Chilean friends disprove torture and carry breathing bodies out from unmarked graves, and that musicians with a talent I could never understand know how to make their drum-sets sound the way a kiss feels. I hope to always continue to make my own worlds, pursue my own art. But I also love to travel. And so that is my mystery career goal, that is the answer to What I Want to Do When I Grow Up. I want to get a pair of comfortable red sneakers, grab a notepad, and walk through the many worlds that have been created for me (and the other travelers I will meet along the way).
posted by Adam at 1:40 AM [edit]

The wizard tree
part one

On the day the prince rode out from the kingdom, every child grew a year older, so clear was the sunlight that it etched them more firmly into this world from the nothing out of which they had been carved. It was that kind of day.

The prince rode for days, thinking little, from the hills outside the kingdom down a long slope to the banks of the Very Ugly Sea. He paused there in the breathless beauty. He could see mist coming off the water, mist off the satisfied skin of a seal, mist of his own breath. He carved a letter into the sand which was better than any letter I have sent you, but was addressed to no one.

On the fifth day the prince reached the forest, where he was supposed to find the wizard tree. He looked from tree to tree but saw only maple, elm, palm, ombu, and the face of his true love. He pushed past, looking onward. At last the woodchuck, tired of watching this fool prince wander through the forest (and disturbed that he was crushing many edible things underfoot), asked him, "What do you seek?"

"I seek the wizard tree."

"And what is your question for it? I would be glad to deliver it, and bring back the answer, and then you won't have to walk so much. I can see that you are tired."

"I am tired," the prince replied. "But I cannot give you my question. If anyone other than me asks it, it will no longer be my question, and the answer thus may be true for you, but almost certainly won't be for me."

"And are you sure you want to ask this question?" asked the woodchuck. "What if you don't like the answer?"

"If the answer is true, and I understand that the wizard tree always speaks the truth, then it matters not whether the answer I receive is one I like or not."

"Then I will take you there," said the woodchuck.

They went into a part of the forest so thick that it became hard to find the spaces between the trees. Often the prince had to find his way through what seemed to be a labyrinth of wood, walls of tree-trunk growing together. At the heart of the labyrinth they descended into a hole, the woodchuck lighting up his eyes and shining them forward so the prince could see. "A little trick I learned in the navy," said the woodchuck. They emerged from the hole on the banks of a stream. They hopped into a rowboat. The woodchuck paddled with his tail. "A little trick I learned in the Marines," he said.

They disembarked on the other side and followed a path. As the path petered out at the top of the treeline, the woodchuck said, "From here you go alone. You said it was just your question."

"But where is the wizard tree?"

"There will be only one tree up there, only one tree that grows above the tree line. You will know it."

"And how will I get back from here?"

"The way back is always shorter," said the woodchuck. "You haven't noticed that before?" He disappeared into the forest.

The prince walked up the rock face. The slope was steep and he couldn't see the summit for the brightness of the sun. He kept climbing. At last he could see the summit just above him. But he saw no tree. "Damn woodchuck," he thought, "There's no tree above the tree line. He's probably laughing his way home on that little boat, which won't be there when I need to get back across the stream."

He reached the top just then, and the sun was so strong and the air so thin that his shadow turned red, began to burn the things it touched. He sat on a rock and listened to his heart pound. No tree in sight. Just the land in all its beauty stretched about before him, shining as if purposefully showing off a new outfit. The land he had come here to kill with a question.
posted by Adam at 11:51 PM [edit]

Summons

I heard you saved a child on Mars
by walking on eggshells through space
'til you brought him back in a bundle.

I heard you saved a child in Atlantis
just as the markets were crashing
and the deep blue sea coming in from everywhere.

I heard you saved a child from sleep
looking down from the great height of consciousness
just to see her wake up.

I heard you died saving a child
in a world that has already gone
leaving the child alive but without home.

I heard you died. Now come back
to life. There is a child here on Earth
who still needs you.

posted by Adam at 11:20 PM [edit]

Bowling with Chileans

The pins come down and wow, they are over an ocean,
they stretch from desert to melting glacier.

It doesn't matter that you don't know who shares
her bed--you won't know tomorrow either.

There is something violent at the throat of the night,
in its secret sounds, drowned out by friends and french fries.

We are bowling for our lives. This I know. Our scores don't count
but if we stop, we stop forever. The detective buying soda tips his hat,

He knows I know that I am lost. That outside the revving motors are waiting
for me alone to come out--my bowling shoes left absentmindedly on my feet--

and face the full teeth of their anger: motor oil, menace, disgust, heartache.
The power of the imagination to turn against itself. The sad smell of red wine.

Bowling with Chileans, mixing averages into physics and crushing distance
into the size of a wire, you can forget for a second that the night itself is a liar,

That your room is drunk, your sweater cold, your love is gone, and the detective
with the soda has betrayed you. Run to the south, my friend, and see how far you get

Before you catch up with you, and tear you, and leave yourself tattered on the lane.
posted by Adam at 1:48 AM [edit]

I write this many words to not write any more tonight.
posted by Adam at 8:06 PM [edit]

Villanelle para todos

Like you, just like you,
or a leaf laying colors on the land,
maybe I can fake it too.

I was too scared to demand,
as the faucet froze forever blue--
like you, just like you.

The guitar sits empty on its stand
while the drummer hits the skin on cue.
Maybe I can fake hit too?

My confession to the empty land:
I say things and then hope they're true,
like you, just like you.

Of course there are secrets and
one might lie right next to you--
maybe I'd have lied there too?

It's January. I understand,
so I'll just make my life anew.
Like you, just like you,
maybe I can fake it too?
posted by Adam at 12:00 AM [edit]

Don't be so negative

Not a letter, not an ocean, not this time. Not dinner,
not hungry, no one at the door. Not a time bomb,
no hot water. Not hidden in the tiny tendricles
of the tiny tentacles of an ant's inner ear.
Not riding a dragon, not wishing to tonight,
not dotting my eyes ever again. Not loud,
not barefoot, not in my room or out beautiful
on the street. Not calling Colin, not combing
the barn for another lie to put on film.
Not chasing ourselves into another year.
Not small enough to fit into the overhead compartment,
so small it could hurt you, not weaving or knitting
or chrocheting or however the fuck you spell it.
Not on time, years late in fact, not in front
of the computer from nine to five. Not bothering
to buy a ticket when a simple kiss gets you in
for free. No quarters for the meter. Not a letter.
Not sealed with anything. Not good enough to share.
Not whistling when it boils. Screaming. Forever.
Not stopping.
posted by Adam at 9:04 AM [edit]

Make it right/don't make it perfect

Under the mountain, down the salt road
the prince takes his horse to water.
Gone the city, gone the demons,
whom good always swallows down
like a glass of water. This is a story,
after all, and so we all win.

Make it right, don't make it perfect.
Don't kill it where it stands with water
dripping out from between its teeth.
Make it suicide, or at least fake it
that way--
--the detectives won't look any deeper.

Under the mountain, down the salt road,
which is melting even as I write,
the prince mounts up to go:
gone the demons,
gone the friends,
but still dirty the dishes.

Gone a life,
but still alive.
posted by Adam at 8:54 AM [edit]

This many words could have been a letter.
This many words could have snowed, and covered over everything.
posted by Adam at 11:28 PM [edit]

Hidden in the up and down

Cock-fighting illegally is sure to get you bloody
Red and in trouble with
All the wrong sorts of people living in this town of the mind.
Zebra-striped candle wax drips down the walls in here.
You shiver, trapped in a world I made by mistake.

Why wonder at the acrobatics of the light,
Having already shut the window? You were
Always screaming at things that had happened before.
Too late.

Younger girls still rage at the homework instead,
Opening book upon book of the mad stuff of knowledge.
Unretainable, unlikely to change the sad sad sunset.

College, sandwich, pea-coat,
Old religion, new wine, sand on the sill,
Upstairs, in the attic, smooching,
Livid, strumming, scissor-hands,
Dropped, cracked, swept, cleaned,
Value-added, onslaught, tremendous,
Exits.

Have you ever bothered to read a puzzle
After you knew the answer already?
Deep in the dark I have.
posted by Adam at 11:57 AM [edit]

Let's paste artificial sunsets into our old photos

as if we were older than we really are, and could really say
it was final and ready for memory. "I have to pee," she says,
"Hold on a minute," and the world turns quickly as I open the refrigerator,
nothing worth eating. "The thermometer reads twenty-eight," she says,
"But it feels warmer outside 'cause there's sun." How mundane. How awesome.

Hey, did you open up that box I gave you? I think I put a vocabulary inside.
I am not certain. Wear safety googles or you might hurt me with your eyes.

To all the gazillion printed sheets of paper, true to their masters even as they
join the rest of the trash. To all the gods she bought at the craft fair. "I'm so hungry
all the time," I say, "Maybe I'm pregnant." Not that funny at all, she laughs to be nice.
There's another one of me in her future. I hope he makes more sense.

It's time to end this one, don't you think? The world up here is frozen but the cars
keep moving, as if their destinations could be important anymore. "The thermometer
reads my mind," she tells me. Now I know how I got so damn cold.
posted by Adam at 11:45 AM [edit]

This is a story of water
written on paper a world ago

This is a story of water, of how bees
got mixed with flesh and created a red mark.
When you walk out to the water, submerge your
lids in it. Tell time to let you stay, then you will hold
the contours of the answer--surprisingly unimpressive
once lifted from the water, but glimpsed from above
so immaculate. I would have given wings if I had them.
I told you dark, desolate, peering down on your sleeping bed.
I told you, "have mercy," you didn't, which is how I myself
came to the water. To find a neck I might love. To break twigs
underfoot, disturb myself, become meek again. Become quieter,
as you have taught me, by showing me how little is said when we say.
I found a trumpet once under the water. Gurgle was its only tune.
But refract that gurgle through the right water and you get gilded,
children, paper and throne. You get tired, so lie down and stop
being so goddamn lucky. Lie down like you once did for me,
only slower, and let me land on you like a moth. I won't unfold
this time, this time I have no colors to show. On your honesty
swear you were honest. I still think you weren't. On my deathbed
buy me a calendar. From Mars send me letters--think of me in red.
A whole planet without water. A fruit with no seeds. A bed made up
for one, here at the ending, under the mountain, down the salt road,
with no footsteps to follow.
posted by Adam at 9:35 PM [edit]

A day before home

I sit shirtless in Austin
my torso innocent still of the smart
of cold air, wondering if it'll actually make me smarter
again under the comfortingly finite sky
with all the hands that reach into it--
white branch, black branch, building,
the knobby fingers of home.

A day before home I watch no movies
don't even leave the house
wrestle my own body to the floor--
sleep now, sleep. I don't.
My family is singing through the telephone
that hasn't rung. Outside it is Christmas,
the cars empty out from the lot, empty out
from the streets--where have they all gone?
Everyone's at a party without me, in the woods?

I'd have liked to bring all the cookies I won't eat before I leave,
share the leftovers of an exact week I'll never see again. On
Christmas day, shirtless, unplugging the whole apartment,
I make airplanes out of my sleeplessness that bring me again
to a home I left once forever, to which I am always coming back.

posted by Adam at 11:36 PM [edit]

Domingos callados
for Chico and Loreto


One of the beautiful things about Chile is that it is still
a country of quiet Sundays. The bread sits bored
in its basket, the microbus passes slowly
in the hopes of convincing us not to walk.

What mystery is beneath your fingernails that you bite at them so?

Here in the home of the brave, I try sometimes
to make my Sundays quiet, but that which is brittle
burns at the touch. The bread sits humming
in the refrigerator, all the tocs give way to tics.

In Chile it was just toc toc toc,
but let's not talk of that now, let's
paste artificial sunsets into our old photos.
This is one more poem about Chile,
nervous, staring at your hands,
and this is one more ear you'll never hear.
posted by Adam at 11:20 AM [edit]

Why they won

They won because they were always the fastest,
because they had runner's calves that sprinted past you
as you wound your way troubled from tree to aging tree,
as you discovered the thin taste of a lie as it passed through
your perfect teeth. They won on the ground, in the air,
for always being faster. And what were you left with?
The sense that you were always watching. The knowledge
of the non-winners. At the finish line I'm still waiting for you.
I don't want the winners, I don't want to win, I want you.
posted by Adam at 11:42 PM [edit]

Trying to mean uptown

Spaceport Chirstopher walks down a beat-up street
to a bar where they mean uptown, they try uptown
and they just don't get it right. The time is perfect
for the painful salute of glass on glass, for the crushing
of the pill that ruins the time-release mechanism
of his hate. It comes all at once, and he is like a lily
going to war, uptown. Brought down like the many
sparks that a repairman collects in his toolbox.
He goes from light to neon light, and wherever
an "s" sputters or an "f" has gone right out,
he slips a spark back into the tube. It lights
up the uptown. The landing lights in Spaceport
Christopher are where the starships come back
home. Their motors click from full flush to a mild
hum; they are home again, Thanksgiving dinner.
The unwanted second plate. Christopher thanks
you for the attention, buttons up his coat, unbuttons
it again as soon as the cold hits. It is hot and uptown
in this bar, and I have just seen Christopher slide down
his chair. Under the table he's just garments. Poor fool.
In my waking life I would help him. Here I sit, stare, hum
"uptown, uptown," while he lets his hate keep hurting him.
posted by Adam at 12:16 AM [edit]

Letter to National Public Radio

Dear "Morning Edition",

Thank you for airing Ellen Friedman's commentary this morning (December 4) about her dissent against the current war in Afghanistan. I want to reassure Ms. Friedman that she is not alone in questioning the bombing of, as she phrased it, one of the world's poorest countries by one of the world's richest.

I thank her for mentioning the World Court as an alternative framework in which we might have brought terrorists to justice while strengthening the rule of law world-wide, and even laying the groundwork for how future terror and war crimes will be prosecuted. Perhaps massive food aid, without any bombs whatsoever, could have empowered the Afghan people to acheive the same results--the lifted veils and humming radios--that have recently come to us at the cost of innocent lives (not to mention all the lives that will be lost to starvation this winter).

Ms. Friedman should know that her words did not fall soundlessly. Her courage in speaking out has inspired me, and I hope others along with me, to lift my own voice a little louder.

Adam Rosenblatt
Austin, TX

posted by Adam at 10:52 AM [edit]

Another New Hampshire

You laugh at the granite walls that make both sides highway
and press the pedal down atomic, we are in such a rush
to get to a place we've already been, so long it's been
since we've been to a place we've already been.
I might've gone, on a family plane flight, and you might've
gone in a car to a concert. But we haven't gone, not for
a long time now, not to New Hampshire. So drive like you
mean it for once, you always said I should learn stick-shift
but I didn't care enough, not when not driving left my hands free
to hike you. I was always trying to reach the top without falling.
You laugh at the granite walls that make both sides highway
and press the pedal down atomic, I am in such a rush
Can't you see I'm trying to get to New Hampshire in time for all our snow?
posted by Adam at 12:22 AM [edit]

The thinking cell

On the movie screen
As they are tucking you in
All the locusts and the passengers
In this inverted and uncrowded city

You find a heart on the ground
A lump, a sugarcube too soon
And pocket it to go
As you turn past the library
That is always on fire

I return to windows to tell you this: what you have taken
No one ever gives back. What you have seen you may never
See again. The widowers in the park unroll slowly the newspapers
From their sleeves. No one knows the secrets of their loves, the specifics
That made this marriage not that marriage, this trick with the apron-strings
Become later a long silent cry of grief. And you walk by thinking of chess.

On the ground it's making telephone calls to passersby
It beats, no one hears, the ground is shaking
The hand that comes and puts out the lights
The slow counting of revenue at the end of the day

On the countless Sundays you promised me
In the immense shade of winter noon
Grackling at the grackles to make them fly
Standing in parking lots because it's more important

Promise them again, mean it this time. The burns are turning back to books
As you let them slide from your ruby lips. The waiters in their cars, white t-shirt on
And collared shirt hanging from the back, make time move more slowly as the eye
Follows them. It's because they don't want to arrive at work. It's because they smoke.

On a bridge in a skipping town where the water shines all the lies back at the teeth of the liars
And the missile men sell their wares door-to-door while the shoes are more important than the feet
I look up and send a blimp to you, you send it back--the air is gone from it--and leave blimp-shell

Beating like an aorta amongst the aching feet on the concrete city street
posted by Adam at 10:49 PM [edit]

Letter to the Yale Daily News


Published Wednesday, November 28, 2001
Flaws with international tribunals, American courts not reason enough to abandon them


To the Editor:

I regret not having been at Yale Law School professor Ruth Wedgwood's speech on Monday night ("International law expert favors military tribunals," 11/27) to hear her full argument in favor of military tribunals to try terrorists.

From the article in the Yale Daily News, however, I garnered that the bulk of her argument rested on presenting problems with international tribunals and federal court cases.

Yet only to point out problems in the existing systems, just as death penalty supporters so often accuse our criminal justice system of being unable to keep violent prisoners incarcerated long enough, does not alone justify this new course of action.

The moral quandary over secret military tribunals in which we deprive the accused and the American public of their usual rights, like the moral quandary over execution, does not disappear simply because other solutions are seen as problematic.

The United States can either work to strengthen international tribunals and allow them more flexibility, thus building up the framework in which we will bring future terrorists and war criminals to justice, or we can turn our back on that challenge and instead favor military tribunals, a system which has always been used at great cost to democracy.

Adam Rosenblatt
Alumnus
Saybrook, Class of 2000
Austin, Texas
posted by Adam at 10:32 AM [edit]

Yes, I am writing this after we spoke on the phone and you were sad.
The first thing I thought of was apple trees: how we trust them.
The apples that are like green faces blushing red. When you bite
the first time, interrupting the sacredness of that globe, a section
slides startled into your mouth. So far from its home, so suddenly.
Another sweet-tasting victim of autumn. I don't know why
I thought of apples, which to me lately are just a row of names
in the supermarket, a sticker I must peel off, another fruit I must
wash before putting it in the bag with the rest of my lunch. But
think of apples I did, and somehow it meant you, now,
which to me will always also mean us, then, always.
posted by Adam at 12:43 AM [edit]

Some detectives

1. The polite detective:

The polite detective shows his face and bends his knee, and pretends he doesn't want what he wants from you.
Don't let him look through your eyeglasses, though he says he must borrow them just to tie his shoe.
Once he's seen what you've seen, you will never see it again.

2. The detective who climbs on top of tall buildings and offers you the cosmos, the moon and stars, fun, immortality, fear of breathing but the courage to hurt people you love, every weekend truly free, a platonic massage, an actual understanding of football, the ability to genuinely convince the other side, statistics with meaning:

He is an inveterate liar and has none of these things to give you.
On the other hand, has anyone made a better offer?

3. The graceful detective:

People were always telling him, "You're in the wrong line of work. You should be in Hollywood, a movie star, or a raindrop at least."
"No, he said, as he tiptoed around the clues and suddenly twirled, "A detective's life is for me. Do you know how many beautiful mirrors I find in all these clues?"

4. The detective who shot:

He was an incredible marksman but he could not look at those he shot. With the brilliance of a welfare-reformer or Contra-supporter, he closed his eyes and shot shot shot shot shot shot shot shot shot...
posted by Adam at 6:23 PM [edit]

Dog problems

The downstairs neighbors at our apartment complex have dog problems. I am starting to worry. When they first moved in, they had a dog named Thomas. He was small, brown, and kind of unnoticeable. I tend to notice big, enthusiastic dogs that run up to sniff you and want a belly-rub, and then at other times (especially while biking to and from work) I regretfully notice the petite, haywire dogs that go bezerk barking at me as if their houses were nice enough to protect, and is as if they, in their football-sized bodies, could do anything to protect them from me. Thomas was neither of these kinds of dogs. Nevertheless, his owners were always apologizing for him, from the day they moved in.

"We really, really hope Thomas isn't keeping you up with all his barking," they said when I first met them. They are sisters, from Pennsylvania, one of them a grad student in social work and the other a Spanish major at the local Catholic college. They are very polite, and I get the impression that they pray. I sometimes see the older one jogging when I'm on my bike. Her hair is always tied back in a brown ponytail; she even jogs politely. "We hope Thomas isn't keeping you up." Until the first time they said it I hadn't noticed yet that they owned a dog.

The other funny thing about all this was that my roommate is named Thomas. As the morning ritual of Thomas (the dog) barking and them yelling at him began, I initially got confused, as if my roommate had gone down below and begun to chew their chair legs and pee on their potted plants.

Every morning I would hear it, about a half hour before I needed to be up for work. Thomas would bark, extremely softly, almost half-heartedly. Next would come the piercing cry of one of the normally soft-spoken sisters: "THOMAS! THOMAS, NO!" Silence for a moment, and then the bark again: a bark that, left alone, would blend into all the normal morning sounds that do not wake me up, like the sound of one hand clapping. What woke me up, every morning, were Thomas' draconian mistresses, saying "no no no" like the buzzing of an alarm.

We assured them, every time we spoke, that Thomas was not causing us any problems. Around this time, I should add, the sisters won the Forest Creek Village apartment complex "Porch of the Month" award, a prize that my roommate and I had coveted for some time. Sure, when they moved in they had cleaned out the overgrown weeds that the former residents had left, spread wood chips, planted bushes, and set out lawn chairs. But my roommate Thomas and I had succeeded in keeping our ivy plant alive even as our other four plants died of neglect, had installed a stolen parking sign (it read: "Weekend Rate, $5") on the balcony until we were told it was "trash" and "in violation of our lease," and even let our peace-loving sentiments be known to users of the parking lot by nailing a "Texans United Against War" sign, formerly stapled to a stick of wood for a protest, to our outside wall. Walking past the little "Porch of the Month" placard below us every morning was like a slap in the face. Worse still was when I saw, early in the morning, the apartment manager come out to their apartment to make sure the placard was still straight and securely fastened.

One day last week I came home to find a puppy, beautiful with black fur and white on her beard and belly, hopping around their yard. One of the sisters, the blonde, younger one who studies Spanish, was outside watching the pup. I said hello and asked if it was their puppy. "Yes," she said, "We just got her. Unfortunately, we had to put Thomas to sleep. He was very aggressive." The unnoticeable Thomas the dog suddenly came to life in my mind's eye. He stood below me, alert, ears pricked, bored by his small confines, considering a bark, perhaps thinking better of it. Unless Thomas suffered a split-personality disorder, he was not an aggressive dog.

The sister told me that the new dog was named Gracie, that they had got her at the pound. "She cries a lot when we're not here," she said, "I hope it doesn't bother you."

I wake up these mornings to a familiar but altered sound. Gracie, locked in the same immaculate Porch of the Month that Thomas once called home, tries out a few new puppy voices. She wines a bit, lets it turn into almost a howl, and then gives a short bark, which comes out feeble from her developing vocal chords and tends to crack at the end. Not the kind of sound that would keep me awake. Instead, it is the cry that follows, "GRACIE! GRACIE NO!" that sends me reaching to turn off the alarm, pee, and climb into the shower.

The other day when I arrived home from work Gracie was in her porch trying out more puppy barks. From inside the apartment came the blonde sister, and she leaned down over Gracie, held her head, and whispered down into her ear, "No, Gracie, no. No, no, no." It was then that I realized that the sisters don't know how to say no to a dog. They don't say "no" in the firm, authoritative voice with which most dog-owners remind their pets who exactly is the leader of the pack. Rather, they sound like they are pleading, like they are being held at gunpoint and asked to fork over their schoolbooks. I think this confuses the dogs. The words say "no," but the tone says, "Please consider the possibility of not barking." Thomas and Gracie, shocked by the insecure sound in the voices of the large humans they had taken for the alphas of their pack, must have wondered, "Who will protect me now?" So they barked, half-heartedly, hoping someone would take this burden of barking away from them. I hope that Thomas, in Doggie Heaven, has found his burden lifted.

I now, along with Thomas my roommate (and perhaps--who knows?--the ghost of the other Thomas) am paying close attention to Gracie. These dog problems must not result in any more death. At the first sign of trouble--a cry from Gracie, a pleading look up at us as we finish eating breakfast on our balcony--we will launch over the railing and down into the Porch of the Month. We will swing from the vines of our reasonably healthy ivy and cushion our fall with the wooden parking sign. We will grab Gracie and run out from Forest Creek Village in search of freedom. After all, isn't Gracie like all of us? She came into the world after atrocity had already been committed and lives with its legacy hanging over her. She is taught that courtesy means silence, that the difficult and shaky sounds of growing up are offensive to those around her. Finally, she has learned quickly that the most fearsome authority is that which bends over you, grabs you softly around the ears, and whispers quietly to you, "No no no..."

The sisters downstairs can win their Porch of the Month awards and apologize profusely and water all their perfect plants. In the meantime, Thomas and Gracie and I are letting the ivy grow wild and the Texans United Against War sign be lifted by the breeze and carried to a stranger's house like a message dropped from the mouth of a dove passing overhead. We're on the road, on our way to somewhere new. I'm working on my bark. It keeps cracking at the end, but I'm sure eventually I'll be able to make it long, proud, and smooth, like the road we're on right now.
posted by Adam at 12:12 AM [edit]

Say nothing if it's first

The prince traded his property rights for a miracle
hidden inside a kaleidoscope. He looked and saw a family
dinner, his mother rising up from the table, the end of speaking.
The quietest paths a family walks down together. The shiny chrome
that lines the handle to the oven door. When you shake a little
you lose that image. When you sit down and stop shaking
you lose even a little bit more. Let the dogs out, show them a good time,
it's alright not to cry. The prince is recreating New England autumn
from all the rotting pencils and smashed moths he can find. He lights them
on fire, watches October burn its way into the New Hampshire mountains.
Where do you go after the end of speaking? How much trash can be traded
for a kaleidoscope? At the end of the driveway is a little pothole where our
family dinners reappear weeks later, emptied of speech, full of the motions
that make him my father, you my sister, and me into any other boy. We go
to cinema school to learn how to replay these things, how to edit the motion
of your hands laying a plate before me into the long slow sweep of an entire
life. We go to school in the mornings, pinched at the corner of the eyes,
nose falling into the hot mug at breakfast. We wake up and we go,
and on the way we pass the prince, still shaking the kaleidoscope,
looking for the crystal balls inside. His jacket's too small and his nose is running.
He's the ruler of everything. Find him somewhere deep inside, dissuade him
from his woeful trade, tell him what the kaleidoscope's really worth: a penny
caught between the seams. He'll be wiser for the wisdom, though still penniless,
and the streets he walks to go home will sag under the weight of silent families.

posted by Adam at 9:22 PM [edit]

I call you every Saturday night to tell you that I still.
The strong are fascinated by the word "brittle," so perfect
for describing a concept they don't understand, so onomatopoetic,
so riddled with tiny cracks on the point of breaking.

In Gloucester, in the summer, there are days that must end
in fish and chips. They require beer, too, even if it's bitter,
even if it tastes vaguely like sucking on a rag. This is summer:
sometimes you just do what is required of you.

I've seen them modelling your future in the store windows.
The colors are pleasing but the plastic curves leave something
to be desired. Intensely. In the crooks and the nooks where you
sat with your book your fashion was always more brittle.
posted by Adam at 2:26 AM [edit]