Mia Kang

Only thing left to love is Philadelphia.

Only thing left to save is Philadelphia.

I helped all my lovers fall back in love with their city, their art, their husbands and wives.

I helped all my landlords wipe their asses.

I municipally bonded, tax-free.

I flowed with the pitches and the bad calls, stalled in the buses and cut through the parking lots.

I wrote report after report, gathered my specialized knowledges, gave the case interview my best

shot.

You can trust me, I said.

I want nothing, I said.

My hands itched in the overgrowing lots where I counted intangibles.

I loved any person who understood the terrible price.

Their eyes registered the overlay.

Ruth Lilly went to eat at the Taco Bell.
Polio in the water made the bagels better.

Our dosages had exchange rates; at the poetry retreat
we prescribed each other titles. I ate

a handful of almonds, guilty about the drought
and rich in email. When Michael totaled

the blue Corolla, I folded
one thousand paper cranes as a prayer

then forgot how to pray. His metal
hip pains him more each day, but he waters

the marigolds religiously. His hair billows
in the photo: storming the stage at the Fifth International

AIDS Conference. We make jokes all the time,
using laughter as a ventilator. There aren’t enough

vaccines, or there are, but they’re always in the wrong
place at the wrong time, or they’re nowhere.

But I am, at the least, antidepressed.
The valley of my making

is becoming a mountain. The moles, my god,
you can’t shoot them fast enough.

I would die for all of you
but I deserve better.

Need bio