January 2024
Deborah Adelman
adelman.deborah@gmail.com
Bio Note: I spent my young adulthood wandering and living in various parts of the world and learning new languages, before settling in Oak Park Illinois and teaching English and Film Studies at College of DuPage. Newly retired, I am able to devote more time to my writing and to political activism, and I've started studying a new language. I have published my creative writing in Puerto del Sol, Cream City Review, and Memoir Magazine, among others.

Die-in at Federal Plaza
we lie down to die together side by side the cold granite beneath us my eyes still open above us autumn leaves float like birds in the updraft, gray sky of November holds different shades of clouds an American flag jets in uninterrupted rhythm flying passengers out of O'Hare east over the lake beneath a different sky planes drop bombs with white phosphorus burning through skin to bones shattered by metal and shrapnel we are dying like the children of Gaza I want to take your hand but the girl crushed under rubble had no one holding her next to us the med students in University of Chicago scrubs are dying too god is in the details remarked Van der Rohe so I note them: the Calder flamingo, the poster board with photos of the doctors and nurses who have died outline of glass and steel Mies’ perfect grid small white bundles mimic the shrouds of small bodies, the bloodied limbless children the orphaned children there is no god in these details beneath an indifferent sky the children are dying

Yiddish Class, Final Session
The Yiddish diminutive: how a noun can be made small, small and affectionate, small and intimate. Kop becomes kepl- and then we learn intimacy can go even deeper: the Yiddish iminuitive. My grandmother never said kop when she rested her hand upon my head, not even kepl, but always kepele. dayn kepele. I want to tell my classmates, I form words, I struggle for a full sentence: di bobe flegt ale mol zogn kepele fisele bekele hendele meydele in a halting version of this language of goodbyes that brought our grandparents here, we zoom each other our affection in handwaves, kisses we say in our clumsy way zayt gezund un shtark. Be healthy, be strong. In this language where love goes so deep I want to say much more, want to thank my teacher, my classmates for this journey together. But I can’t. Not yet. Not in Yiddish.
©2024 Deborah Adelman
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