How to Be (A Thinking Person and Keep Creative in the Recession Era)

In the spirit of culture and art as resistance, my very radical and awesome friend, Mia Kang - writing from the cockroach-infested depths of Kosciusko Street in Bushwick - allowed me to share this with all of you.

"How to Be (A Thinking Person and Keep Creative in the Recession Era)"
by Mia Kang


1.

The layered city peels back your skin,
peers behind your eyeballs and sticks
a finger into the gray matter. There’s no need
to hallucinate, not in this circus scene.

Even though the storefronts
are little bubbling amoebas, pulling themselves
along the ground by extension and contraction,
I can tell about the things that came before.

We stand around a simmering cauldron, black iron belly,
dipping our spoons in and out to give it a stir. They fear me
because of what I won’t explain. When I ask you a question,
you answer because you ask questions.


2.

Michael cut off his hair on his fifty-second birthday.
The talk of the town,
panic.

Drama begets drama:
Obama, etc.
Diversion.

Wall, wall, wall.
Chasm, chasm,
cliff.


3.

A group of us are meeting weekly
in a chatroom marked Welcome!


4.

Like I said, all I have to do is snap
my fingers and it appears. You say other
but I know mother. The so-called alternative,
seeing things only in comparison.

Instead, the colors are a constant. The melody
is rooted by a rhythm, the dancer
is suspended in her own height.
In her own right.

Our myths mottle the air, tentatively visible in the subtle
sunlight on the cusp of a new season.