My poem in Abraham Lincoln issue #2

A City in Taiwan, A City in Pakistan, a Cave in Taiwan, a City in New York
(Abraham Lincoln; 'Review')

I was born with AIDS to a Nigerian mother
and a Chinese father
in the slums of Taiwan.
When I was sixteen in Pakistan

a pack of South Asian gerbils ate my arms and legs
when my mother and I were forced by poverty
caused by globalization
to sublet half our bed

to a pack of South Asian gerbils.
My mother died in the attack. Due to celebrity interest that month

in AIDS babies from South Asia
I was featured on CNN.
Within hours a famous writer adopted me
and dedicated to me an issue of his literary magazine
using the proceeds to fund a series of operations
designed to give me cybernetic arms and legs.
Four-hundred thousand dollars were raised

and I underwent twelve operations over three years.
Today I live in a studio apartment in Williamsburg
and spend most of my time watching music videos
on Youtube, masturbating idly

to internet porn, or laying in bed
thinking about the past
while listening to emotional guitar music

from the mid 90’s. Before Pakistan, before the cave
in the mountains, my parents and I worked
in the Taiwanese street market
operating ten to fifteen small pinball machines
awarding high scorers a choice of plastic sandals
plastic animal figurines, or bouncy balls.
We did not make enough money

to eat more than one meal a day
and often those parents
whose children played
the pinball machines
did not either. Sometimes

a limbless person would pull themselves
and a red wagon through the market for alms
with a leather strap in their mouth
and a piece of cardboard beneath their body.
They used their head as a hand

and their neck as an arm
to drag their bodies. Then due to the corruption of the Taiwanese government

combined with pressure from multinational corporations
to organize commerce into centralized shopping centers
and create space for parking lots
the night markets were banned.
My parents and I remained

in the city eating from the garbage at night
and begging for money in the daytime.
One night my father was hit by a bus
and died in the street. A few weeks later my mother put me in a backpack.

I want to type about that poem. I just stared at the computer screen for about twenty seconds. I still want to type about that poem, I am having problems accessing some information that I need in order to type about that poem, the information that I want to type about that poem. I don't know. I am having "major problems" right now with my brain.

Columbia University emailed me about a week ago.

Dear Mr. Tao Lin,

[...] For APAAM, we organize a series of exciting and educational events concerning Asian Americans in the month of April. This spring, the theme for APAAM is unscripted. We decided upon unscripted because it refers to the unlimited definitions of Asian Americans, regardless of what media puts forth. With such power, we as individuals of the Asian American community still hold the pen to determine our own roles on the great stage, the world.

We are interested in hearing about your struggle with the Asian American ?identity crisis,? consisting of topics of what it means to be an Asian American along with the baggage that follows this identity and how you expressed them in your novels, such as "EEEEE EEE EEEE" and "Bed". We plan to reserve time for questions from students. The proposed date is the evening of April 30th, 6:00 to 10:00pm. We look forward to your performance on our stage.

I post that because I laughed when I sent it to someone and they said they laughed also. I did not feel bad laughing. I felt like I was laughing at something in a Kurt Vonnegut novel or something. There is no hatred, judgement, or qualification when I laugh at something. Actually I never feel "hatred" or "anger" that is unsarcastic for more than a few seconds on average maybe (the few seconds that I am not self-aware or enough aware to acknowledge certain things about the nature of being and existence). That time lessened, I think, as I wrote (and read) more professional 20-page short stories (Lorrie Moore & Joy Williams) about human beings doing things and feeling emotions in an arbitrary universe. I am being honest right now.

I want to show my "blogging process." Below is a gmail chat that happened while I was "creating" this post. I feel a little confident in my choice of posting this gmail chat. I still feel a little nervous or something but I think out of the three main things in this post I feel most confident in posting this thing.

me: i am posting double post
abraham lincoln + asian america
they fit together
alex: that works
me: sould i post my response
alex: if you want to
me: would you do it
alex: depends which college
me: columbia university
alex: if it was a big very important one, probably not
is that big and important?
me: i think
i mean, as a raeder, would you rather read the post with my response or not
alex: yes
i would
me: hm ok
i sound like an ass in my response though
alex: if you do not want to post it, then do not post it
me: but i'm not sure
alex: maybe dont post it at first, and then if people ask what you said, then tell them?
me: that sounds like a good idea
alex: in your post, allude to how you responded but dont tell how
me: to get more hits

I wonder if this post will damage my chances at achieving "steady cash flow with no real job" or else somehow destroy my writing career and personal relationships. I know there is a chance of that happening anytime I do something on the internet.