Children of the Children of Adam

Children of Children of Adam

—for Alysia Abbott

I’ve been meaning to reread Whitman since we moved to Brooklyn a month ago,

so I finally pull down this strange beige Heritage Editions Reprints complete and unabridged hardcover edition ex libris Dorothy Anne Naskin with illustrations by Rockwell Kent that my grandmother gave me years ago.

It doesn’t have a publication date & only a strange preface from George Macy, Director of The Heritage Club, explaining that the smaller margins and thinner paper have been used so as to comply with the government’s wartime regulation governing reprints.

Also, there’s this strange image on the title page that cleverly spells “WW” in grass sprouting out of a black block that contains the cryptic numbers 8611776 and 6071492 respectively in a deco font, which I imagine for a moment are the clues to George Washington and Christopher Columbus’ posthumous Masonic cell phone numbers in a teen time travel super-hero history mystery…

Anyway, I don’t love this edition, but it’s the only one I’ve got, and it’s getting late,

so I flip open to “Children of Adam” on page 96 and read:

“The boy’s longings, the glow and pressure as he confides to me what he was dreaming…”

&

“The limpid liquid within the young man…”

“What a queen!” I think,

remembering how naïve & surprised I was to find out he was gay,

though certainly not as surprised as when I found out my father was.

I wish Whitman could have saved him—

streaking back across the dark skies of history in his hot pink tights

with that grassy “WW” emblazoned across his chest to kiss his eyes

& tell him he would be alright.

I snap the book shut after a few pages,

head back to the kitchen for a drink of cold water

& stand in front of the window fan in my boxer shorts,

hand on my hip,

staring out at Whitman’s city—

all the night’s lights winking at me.

Noel Black, Uselysses, Ugly Duck Presse, 2005