Let me tell you about New York City.
The sidewalks are sort of like highways.
The people are sort of like cars.
We all say vroom as we walk.
We say it out loud instead of having conversations or thinking.
Vroom, we say, vroom.
We are busy people.
Let me tell you about New York City.
No one goes to Times Square. No one. Ugh.
Times Square is empty, silent.
Vines grow from the walls.
I don’t know what kind of vines. Like, viney ones.
A cloaked figure wanders Times Square, penduluming a censerful of white smoke out over the empty square, and no one sees, because no one is there, because no one goes to Times Square.
And that’s what New York City is like.
In New York, no one looks at celebrities.
We pretend they don’t exist.
We look through them.
They shout “help.”
They shout “help please I’m on fire.”
(Sometimes the celebrities are on fire.)
But we see that they are famous
and so we just act like they aren’t there.
We move out of the way so we don’t catch on fire too,
but other than that we act like they aren’t there.
Also homeless people, although they are only metaphorically on fire.
Real New Yorkers never eat at Grimaldi’s.
We never eat in Little Italy.
We never eat at chain restaurants.
We never eat at all.
Real New Yorkers consume nothing.
We don’t even have mouths here. Tourists are always walking around with mouths.
Fucking tourists.
In order to be a Real New Yorker you have to have been born here,
or moved here more than ten years ago,
or know the New York password (“Fievel”),
or inherit Real New Yorker status from an existing member who passes away.
No matter how you do it, of course we have to remove your mouth.
That mouth has got to go. We have smooth, featureless lower faces in New York.
No one in New York calls it “the Big Apple.”
We call it N’awlins.
It’s easy to find your way around Manhattan.
Just remember: every address and location in Manhattan.
Just remember every single possible place you could ever go in Manhattan.
Hold the entire island in your head.
See, it’s easy.
Let me tell you about New York City.
Every neighborhood has its reputation.
For instance, Midtown is where the Aerial Sects congregate, using the rope systems they’ve installed and the vines that grow in Times Square to swing from building to building because they believe that touching the ground is an insult to god and they are right.
The East Village used to be cool, but now it’s covered under several feet of gravel. No one goes there anymore, because of the gravel.
Williamsburg is, of course, entirely fictional. When tourists ask us Real New Yorkers how to get to Williamsburg, we laugh and laugh and tell them how to get to Neverland instead. Neverland is pretty fun, so the tourists don’t mind.
Staten Island? Staten Island is in Chicago. No, don’t worry. It’s a common mistake.
Let me tell you about New York City.
Please let me.
I want to tell you about this place I live.
Please.
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Give You Advice.
Tags: humor, joseph fink, new york, poems, poetry
AMAZING.
Fuck This City And Everyone In It
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgL_5QcZCMo
But surely, the streets ARE paved with cheese, right? Right??
I was just there this weekend. They are no longer paved with cheese. Maybe there is an alleyway or two in midtown that I didn’t get to, but the rest I have consumed.
I am thankful for Boston each and every day. At least we have mouths here.
Even if there are certain areas where you can’t go because of the tourists and/or students.
I fucking love this. (Sort of irrelevantly, it reminds me of that Guy Maddin movie, My Winnipeg.)
JOSEPH FINK.
NEW YORK.
THE TOAST.
POETRY.
I am happy.
echoing you into oblivion.
wAIT I MISSED THE BYLINE and I was all “this is so Night Vale-y and I can’t decide how I feel about that” but WELP. I GUESS IT IS EXPLAINED AND I KNOW EXACTLY HOW TO FEEL NOW
OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG I MISSED IT. And now I love this even more than I did before which I did not think was possible.
This.
The whole time I was reading this I was thinking “this is so Night Vale” and I legit squealed when I saw the byline. Joseph Fink! On The Toast!
If you can make fun of New York, you can make fun of anywhere.
I am a person who is fond of poetry conceptually but never falls in love. I am in love. This is just wonderful.
No one in New York calls it “the Big Apple.”
We call it N’awlins.
::clutches ears, mewling in pain::
Wonderful! I love it Joseph. Liking the banjo, too.
I am about to be sent this link by every friend or family member who has ever heard me talk about New York, and I will thoroughly deserve it.
WHY HELLO JOSEPH FINK. IT IS VERY NICE TO SEE YOU HERE.
This is a great poem and I believe every word of it, even though I’ve only been to NYC once, non-consensually as a teenager, and it was not a pleasant time on account of it being non-consensual (my dad picked me up before spring break and informed me we’re going to the airport, no lie, and of course it would’ve been an awesome surprise if we got along at all but that was not the case).
Also, this description of NYC reminds me very much of the one Catherynne Valente wrote in Palimpsest, from the perspective of an immigrant locksmith. If I may:
He lived in New York, but the New York of Oleg Sadakov was not the New York of others, and he alone ministered this secret place, stamped onto the back of the city like a maker’s mark. He crept and crawled through it, listening, for Oleg could listen very well, better than rabbits or horses or safecrackers.
The trouble was, New York was famous. Oleg had even seen it in Novgorod — a city so often photographed, filmed, recorded that there was truly no one who did not know its name, its outline, the shape of its body. So many books had been written about it, so many people had loved it and lived in it until their clothes smelled of its musk, so many had eaten its food and drunk its water and extolled its virtues like a gospel of the new world, that it had, with infinitesimal slowness, ceased to be, melted into vapor and dust. What rose now on the island of Manhattan was no more than the silver-white echo of all those millions of words expanded on its vanity, the afterimage of all those endless photographs and movies which broadcast it to anyone who might live ignorant of its majesty. A monster, a fairy-tale mirror, glittering but false, a doppelganger, a golem with New York City engraved roughly on its forehead.
No one had noticed.
Oleg retreated from the broad limbs of this new metropolitan giant and saw only the locks. He let people into places both secret and obvious, places they owned and places where they trespassed, into lovers’ hallways and grocers’ shops, into hotel rooms and abandoned buildings. Oleg did not care. He only wanted to touch the locks and find the keys for whom they wept. He saw nothing but the infinite city of locks, turning and winding through and around and behind the monochrome behemoth, and when the hours were very late, he often felt as though he could look through one lock and see all the others lined up behind it, opening up into forever, into a hundred thousand houses, into the Hudson, into the Atlantic. He could almost see the whitecaps breaking.
Thank you, this is really gorgeous, and it rings true to my feelings about New York–so many people are seeing and describing and loving it, it just doesn’t need me. That’s not really why I don’t live there anymore but it’s part of what made living there strange.
Happy to share! It was one of my favorite parts in a really gorgeous book.
In an overcompensatory attempt to not flip the fangirl out about ZOMG Joseph Fink, I will instead point to another lovely New York poem, the sincere and joyfully imperfect but perfect “Steps” by Frank O’Hara. This is New York in winter; “Steps” is New York in spring.
(No, YOU spent part of your enforced family time stitching an ETERNAL SCOUT patch to your carry-on luggage.)
But is it true that it’s been waiting for me?
New York is waiting for us all.
Keep waiting, New York. I’ll see you when I see you.
I don’t know; I do know that the lights are mostly not that bright, so they do not in fact blind most of us, I think. Except in Times Square, where I was forced to go last year; those lights really are blinding. Probably good for the vines.
Can I want who I want? Boys and boys AND girls and girls?
Vroom, we say, Vroom.
Don’t really know how to express how much I loved this.
Also, made me think of this:
Oh, there is nothing like New York in the spring!
…and then the guy spits in Liz Lemon’s mouth. This is one of my favorite 30 Rock opens EVAR.
I feel torn about it because I have to reconcile how much I love this scene and how I think it’s one of the funniest things in 30 Rock with shuddering revulsion towards the idea of a stranger hocking a loogie into my mouth, which keeps me up at night sometimes.
Celebrities: THEY’RE JUST LIKE US
Screaming for help, on fire.
Man, why did my parents make me go to the dentist every six months when I don’t have a mouth? WHY DID I HAVE A RETAINER AND SLEEP HEADGEAR?!
I can only assume it is because my parents are from New Jersey. They had no idea what they were doing when they moved to New York City to procreate. They were unprepared to raise their tiny native New Yorkers.
In the Bronx there are no celebrities to ignore;
we are the edge of the google map that doesn’t refresh when you scroll.
My mentors are Nigerian cab drivers and Dominican abuelitas.
We have a river too.
We have vast parks.
We have so much dog shit on our sidewalks.
i loved this as only a native New Yorker can love it: seeing the truths (you’re right, bodies are cars on the glitter grit highway of the sidewalk, and no one goes to Times Square if you have a mouth, and the real secret we’re so into lipstick is to give the appearance of having a mouth in instances when you might be looking, but it disappears when you do not) and also the half truths (i work in Midtown and i also do not touch the ground when i walk, but i assumed this was a trait of my goddess prophet status; also we never witness celebrities—if we do not see them, they do not exist; this is a standard New York law of physics). Williamsburg is fictional and Staten Island is definitely in Chicago, although this is a recent transaction because we wanted to get rid of its shame, which was not ours. i am this close to holding the whole island in my head. i have had to grow many hands inside my skull to accommodate this. Atlas was a pansy and should not be counted.
I live in New York and I love Joseph Fink, so this is basically the best day of my life.
“No one in New York calls it “the Big Apple.”
We call it N’awlins.”
This is where I lost it. I love this.
The fact that “Fievel” is the New York password implies that New Yorkers actually are pretty cool which is undermining the whole thesis of this satirical poem for me heeeeeeeeelp my sense of humor has been taken over by my need to have all the pieces fit perfectly the battle in my head is real please save me I am not a celebrity on fire.
That’s exactly what a celebrity on fire would say.
*averts eyes*
GodDAMNit.
You forgot that the dog shit on the street is really just compost, and under every pile grows a tree. That’s why there are so many trees in Manhattan.
what about brooklyn tho
brooklyn’s brook flooded in the polar vortex’s aftermath, it’s gone
too bad about that tree then!
What happens if I look in the mirror at night and say Fievel three times? Will I switch places with a homeless New Yorker who is metaphorically on fire and he will become a Canadian who is not on fire metaphorically or otherwise?
Boston has nothing but mouths. They are the opposite of New York, and this is how everyone likes it.
LOS ANGELES FOREVER. (I am a troll.)
Speaking as a native of Los Angeles, this is basically what LA is like too, except that nobody goes to the westside, and the highways are actually highways because there aren’t any sidewalks and therefore nobody walks, or ever has walked, in history, ever.
AHHHHH JOESPH FINK IS ON THE TOAST. All of me loves this.
But how do you vroom with no mouth?
If you have to ask, then you are unworthy of this treasured New Yorker knowledge. Gosh.
There’s a tax on all wicker goods in Toronto,
There’s huge buildings with no windows
And streets with no curves
And inside you find little girls in suits
Running around with black balloons
And munching on edible oil products.
Psh, not since Giuliani.
Keep waiting, New York. I'll see you when I see you.
Oh my god but if this isn’t the best thing. This woman once literally said the ‘if you can make it in New York you can make it anywhere.’ In fact I think she might have said ‘you can make it anywhere baby.’ We’re not friends.
This is amazing and the Ellison-like ending gave it amazing last kick. Love it
“In order to be a Real New Yorker you have to have been born here,
or moved here more than ten years ago,
or know the New York password (‘Fievel’)”
Right there is where I laughed the coffee into my sinus passages.
"In order to be a Real New Yorker you have to have been born here,
or moved here more than ten years ago,
or know the New York password ('Fievel')"
Right there is where I laughed the coffee into my sinus passages.
In New York everything is better because of the water. It’s all about the water. You can’t just like, make New York in your suburban town with your suburban water and expect it to taste like real New York.
In New York everything is better because of the water. It's all about the water. You can't just like, make New York in your suburban town with your suburban water and expect it to taste like real New York.
This is amazing. It got me thinking about all of the conversations I’ve had that contained little snippets of this poem. I couldn’t resist writing a few stanzas of my own:
And when did you move to New York?
Oh, before it was cool
It definitely wasn’t the thing to do yet
There was hardly any reason to set
Foot within 10 miles of this stinking
Chain of islands.
It was a swamp
Where you came to forget
And to be forgotten,
Be lost among the concrete cyprus
And find a lonely, quiet place for thinking
But now it’s ruined,
So the best we can do
Is pretend it’s just us
And if you catch fire
Too bad, you were brazen
To come this far
From civilization
JOSEPH FINK (definitely the real Joseph Fink) ON THE TOAST
YES THANK YOU
I don't know what I expected.
I'm just glad that this poem exists.
I fucking love Joeseph Fink.
Wait, was that last line a reference on the point-and-click adventure, ” I Have No Mouth and I Need to Scream”?
I like the poem it’s great!
AgileZero – I think it’s more likely to have been a reference to the award-winning short story “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream”, on which the point-and-click adventure game was based.