IN THESE TIMES

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To a Friend

(in the style of Pablo Neruda)

By Adrián Bleifuss PradosJuly 6, 2005

You are the best American,
a child with obnoxious optimism.
You are loud and wonderfully impure.
You are a cook and a schemer.
I know the social ferment of your kitchen.
You have plans and programs and radical recipes

to fan the flames of discontent.

You live for the new city,
for its justice,
for the sunny freedom of its broad avenues.

And although we live in an age of smug generals
and rivers of snake oil,
I see your city shining in the distance.

Adrian Bleifuss Prados is a Chicago-based social critic currently serving in the reserve army of labor. He graduated from Haverford College, where he studied history.