Impressions Of New York City Poem by Joon Lee

A million lines slowly undoing themselves
A hundred and twenty-something blocks consuming a hundred and twenty-something other blocks
With a side of mustard
And a paper cup of soda
(When I was nine
I made a diorama of the earliest known iteration of the world
with clay dinosaurs
and toilet paper tube tree-bark
and hastily colored sky
the color of whatever
Crayola executive #45
assumed 'sky blue' entails
I was proud of my
articulate recreation of natural primality
and I never admitted that
I had lifted the scene
from my memories of a much larger diorama
at the Natural History Museum,
which I had visited at age 7
and I remember my head was spinning
and my feet hurt like hell)
And Man in Yankee Cap tells Man with Foreign Accent
To geddafuckouddamyway
And Man with Foreign Accent
Turns to his wife
And says waddafuckishisproblem?
Except in his native tongue
(Aside 2: My earliest memory of New York,
I am in the back of a cab that smells like damp rainjackets
and cigarettes
and my mom is stroking my hair
and I am wearing gray sweatpants
and have spent the past few hours vomiting
and crying
in Seat 45C of a delayed Continental Airlines flight
and the man in Seat 45B, a college student flying home,
had been very gracious and understanding and had even let me
play the game 'Push Push' on his Gameboy
and I look out at a dizzy mess of ash-colored rectangles
and I imagine the cab being eaten alive
before falling asleep on my mother's lap)
And to die in New York
To die, to sleep
To sleep, sleep perchance to Nyquil dream
Of small-town diners and forests and neighbors who know your name.