To Those Who Attempt to Escape Their Own Voice by Becoming Tagg Grant, Thwarting Their Anti-Introspective Parody with Each Penned Thought, While Waiting for and Riding on the C Train, First Draft, October 20.
To the children of the Revolution; to those who with fake rhinestones wear its ideals across their chests.
To rich men with unimpressive girlfriends.
To poor men whose idleness is their greatest accomplishment.
To greasy pharmaceutical reps putting a price on healthcare with every catered lunch.
To those who dance the Macarena, to those who’ve raised the roof.
To those who have matching towels.
To college boys who substitute Billy Madison lines for conversation.
To the girls who will marry them.
To the summer regulars at McKinnley Square playing card games atop trash cans.
To black babies bundled in Old Navy scarves and coats; my most precious memory of New York winter.
To those who preach arrepentimiento on crowded subways.
To those who connect to each other through white headphones–secretly, silently.
You are Walker, Texas Ranger. You are synchronicity. You are creating me.
To the makers of FastBreak, the purchasers of Go-gurt, the producers of Fox.
To Catholics who go to mass daily, and those who don’t go at all.
To young women too big for their designer jeans.
To Atkins dieters refusing homemade bread, to fourteen year olds stapling their stomachs, to ageless females chewing but not swallowing.
You are chilled glasses without coasters. You are overstated. You are humanity and always.
To those who believe in democracy and voted for Schwarzenegger.
To those who can’t escape themselves, the ephemeral, the known…
To the men on stilts in Greenwich Village, quoting Kafka and doing the running man.
To the girl with a narrative voice that is no longer hers–separate, Buddhist–plagiarizing her own words, standing alone, reverencing the ineffable.
