It was the year of the erupting tenements

of getting used to nothing, 
of feeling lucky that it wasn’t us the city ate. 
Uptown and down, the indigenous 
were caught in the rubble. 
The phantom residents of 
the instant glass towers above 
were revealed and no one blinked. 
Their decentralized funds erased us, 
made us Dubai and Kuala Lumpur, 
Kuala Dubai, gleaming and vacant. 
Our rents moved to the 
vigesimal system of the ancient Maya. 
We were hired to play versions 
of ourselves like Hawaiians, 
in graffiti grass skirts dancing for CronutsTM. 
My one true hero was 
the mummy Buddha monk of Ulaanbaatar, 
stiff but alive, dusty in his rainbow body. 
I invoked him every time 
a new Brooklyn asshole 
decided I wasn’t from there. 
I shut down cross-legged, 
radiated anti-authenticity, 
my skin cells flaking as the asshole tried 
to move me to a museum lobby for sale. 
I let the roaming coyotes do the work of 
terrorizing the interlopers and the ghost rich. 
The MTA pitched in with their expertise 
in disorientation and abandonment. 
I decided on a meeting spot 
for after the temples fell, 
in the uptown forests 
of Inwood and Van Cortlandt. 
Telepathically, I texted 
the GPS coordinates to my friends,
included a map of the secret bike trails.

--Sheila Maldonado

Sheila Maldonado summers in Coney Island and winters in Washington Heights.