You smoked without us, Adn, Rufina exclaimed. She must have asked Isabel my name.

I can make more, I said. I can roll another, I corrected. So youre a poet, Adn, she ignored me. I just smiled. She repeated my name as if it were a one-word joke at my expense. He just read at a gallery in Salamanca, Isabel said to spite me. Salamancaelegant! It was clear Rufina was going to ask me what kind of poetry I wrote. What kind of poetry do you write? What kinds of poetry are there? I was pleased with this response and made a mental note to use it from then on. Bad and worse, Rufina said with mock derision. Isabel laughed a little. Maybe it relaxed them further to be allied against me, to taunt the new boyfriend after clearing the air of the old. I, too, dislike it, I said in English. You must come from money, Rufina said, ignoring me again. Then she said something idiomatic involving hands and clouds, which I assumed was a colorful way of saying the same thing. Do you have to work at all? I wasnt sure how to respond to this. I had encountered this association of poetry and money before in Spain, compounded, in my case, by the assumption that all Americans, I mean Americans abroad, were rich; compared to Isabel and Rufina, my family probably was. I had no clear sense of Isabels class position, let alone Rufinas; I knew Isabel had graduated from college, had long worked at the language school, and now had a nice enough apartment, but she also had two roommates. I paid for almost all of our meals and drinks, but thought very little of it, even though it was a significant portion of my total funds, because euros always seemed fake to me. I had no idea, for instance, if the house we were in was of significant value, if land near Toledo was worthless or in high demand, if Rufinas manner of dress or address indicated the working or middle or some other class, or if those were the relevant terms for Spain. I wont have to work for several months, its true, I said in a way that implied I would then have to work in a coal mine. Unless you think writing is work. What will you do when you go back to the United States? Rufina asked. Perhaps the most important unspoken rule that Isabel and I had developed in our short relationship, our most important kind of silence, was never to refer to the time after my fellowship. I looked at Isabel. It had been a while since Id thought what I would, in fact, do upon my return. I dont know that I will go back, I lied. Isabel remained quiet, but there was a change in the intensity of her silence. I lit a cigarette to distance myself from this statement. And your parents will send you money, Rufina laughed, and then said something that involved the word Bohemian. What, she said, do they do? I knew that no matter what I said my parents did, Rufina was going to find it hilarious, so I decided to tell the truth, although I knew it would be particularly funny: Theyre both psychologists. I heard Isabel shift uncomfortably. As expected, this cracked Rufina up. I assumed the flourish of talk that followed

was about the preposterous image of a Bohemian poet supported by his psychologist parents. Isabel said something about not being too hard on me, but I smiled to indicate I was fine with being teased. Isabels friends from the language school are always rich, Rufina explained to me. Friends clearly meant boyfriends. What is your profession? I asked, sounding intensely foreign. I lost my job, she said, flatly. I blinked. Maybe Ill start writing poetry. Maybe, she said, leaning forward and placing her hands on my thighs, youll marry me and we can live off your family. I thought I saw Isabel wince when Rufina touched me. O.K., I said. Do you think your parents would like me? Rufina asked, sticking out her chest in a performance of her voluptuousness I didnt quite understand, but enjoyed taking in. I think my mom and dad would like you, I said. I can cook and clean, she said, sarcastically, crossing and uncrossing her legs. My mom is a well-known feminist, I said, a statement that sounded as stupid as it was. Rufina laughed, Isabel asked what time it was, implying we should leave, but was ignored. I could see her staring at Rufina, mutely telling her to shut up; I didnt understand the extremity of her concern. Youd like my mom, I said to get further away from the feminist thing, but shes not so rich. I smiled again, in part to calm Isabel. Neither she nor my father ever give me money, I lied. Now Isabel was looking at me strangely. I had just finished saying maybe Rufina could meet my parents if and when they visited Spain, when I remembered Id told Isabel that my mom was dead. There were several ways I could have recovered from this mistake; I could have looked melancholy and later claimed that I simply refused to share such a loss with Rufina, or, if Id kept my cool, I could have maintained to Isabel that she had misunderstood my terrible Spanish in the first place, that Id never said or meant to say that my mom had passed away. But I could feel my face, which was burning, fully confess to Isabel that I had lied to her. Id told Isabel the lie during one of our first nights together when, still guilty from having recently told it to Teresa, I had felt compelled to repeat it, maybe to deepen my guilt into a kind of penance; surely Id been drunk. Instead of amplifying my guilt, however, repetition mitigated it. While she had responded tenderly, Isabel never asked me about my family, and I never returned to it; at first Id been aware of needing to avoid talking about my mother, as I still was with Teresa, but with Isabel I avoided talking about almost everything, save for my cryptic aesthetic pronouncements.
From Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner. Copyright 2011 by Ben Lerner. Excerpted by permission of Coffee House Press.

The next morning we had breakfast at the same caf and I said to Isabel that the more I thought about it the more eager I was to get back as I had to work with someone named Teresa on a pamphlet of my poetry that was to be published. I said this as if I were nervous about saying anything regarding Teresa in front of Isabel, nervous I might

hurt her feelings. We can take the train tonight, Isabel said, and because she didnt seem jealous I was furious. Lets just go back now, I said, which was ridiculous. Now? You havent seen the Alhambra, she said. Ive seen it before, I lied. Now she looked jealous. I was elated. With whom? she asked, and it was clear she was only pretending not to care. Teresa, I said, and then pretended I wished I hadnt. And her brother. When? she asked. Around Christmas, I said. I had the sense that Isabel wanted to be my only guide, that while she didnt care who I slept with, she didnt want another woman showing me the architectural wonders of Spain. But you said you wanted to see Granadathats why we came, she said, remembering our conversation in bed. I did want to see it again, I said. And Ill come back again. Fine, she said, angry. I wondered if I would be the only American in history who visited Granada without seeing the Alhambra. After breakfast we took a cab to the train station, bought our tickets, and had around an hour and a half to kill before the Talgo left. It wasnt until we actually bought our tickets that I realized the last thing I wanted to do was to go back. We found a caf and ordered more coffee and the caffeine along with Isabels jealousy inspired me to say, Look, when we get back to Madrid, lets just stay one night. I can get my work done and we can pack for a longer trip. Then we can take another train to Galicia or Lisbon or wherever. Isabel smiled at me, having gone at an alarming rate from anger to something more like pity. I cant, she said. I have to work. Take vacation, I said. I cant, she repeated softly, as if Id asked her to marry me. Dont you have work too? There was gentle derision in the question. For the first time, I took a joke about poetry personally. Is your work more important? I asked, as if her work were guarding paintings. No, she said simply. I was crushed by how easily she ignored my implication. We spent the rest of our downtime at the caf, then boarded the train, and passed the next five hours reading, napping, smoking, but almost never speaking. I missed my parents terribly. By day the Spanish countryside looked a lot like Kansas.
From Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner. Copyright 2011 by Ben Lerner. Excerpted by permission of Coffee House Press.

When I got back from Granada I began to spiral, not out of control, but downward, nevertheless, in a helix of small pitch. I had not realized how much I was invested in the idea that Isabel and Teresa were invested in me, and now that it seemed neither had the inclination even to feign serious investment, I felt not only rejected, but as though many

months of research had evaporated. It occurred to me that I could at least feel less guilty regarding all the lies about my family, as nothing significant had been built upon them, but in fact I felt wave after wave of intensified remorse. It became increasingly clear to me that I would have to confess my slander to my parents at some point in order not to be consumed by it, which added dread to my guilt. My distress about Isabel and Teresa, coupled with my guilt about my parents, opened onto larger questions about my fraudulence; that I was a fraud had never been in questionwho wasnt? Who wasnt squatting in one of the handful of prefabricated subject positions proffered by capital or whatever you wanted to call it, lying every time she said I; who wasnt a bit player in a looped infomercial for the damaged life? If I was a poet, I had become one because poetry, more intensely than any other practice, could not evade its anachronism and marginality and so constituted a kind of acknowledgment of my own preposterousness, admitting my bad faith in good faith, so to speak. I could lie about my interest in the literary response to war because by making a mockery of the notion that literature could be commensurate with mass murder I was not defaming the victims of the latter, but the dilettantes of the former, rejecting the political claims repeatedly made by the so-called left for a poetry radical only in its unpopularity. I had been a small-time performance artist pretending to be a poet, but now, with an alarming fervor, I wanted to write great poems. I wanted my work to take on the United States of Bush, to shed its scare quotes, and I wanted, after I self-immolated on the Capitol steps or whatever, to become the Miguel Hernndez of late empire, for Isabel and Teresa and everybody everywhere to read my poems, shatter storefronts, etc. This was a structure of feeling, not an idea, which made it harder to dismiss, and I felt it more intensely in direct proportion to its ridiculousness. And when I doubled my dosage, and the insomnia returned, I began to read and write feverishly. This was less a new faith in poetry than a sudden loss of faith in pure potentiality.
From Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner. Copyright 2011 by Ben Lerner. Excerpted by permission of Coffee House Press.