i want to read at clayton banes' bookstore

I will play a recording of one of my other readings. I will leave the podium and stand in the back and laugh loudly whenever the recording says something funny and push the back of someone’s head whenever the recording says something funny or insightful and slap people’s heads uncontrollably due to being overwhelmed by the joy and insight of my own poetry. Clayton Banes will motion for me to come to him. I will walk to Clayton Banes with a nervous and embarrassed face. My hands will shake very hard and hit small children whose heads come up to my waist. Clayton Banes will say, “Tao, I’m nearly twice your age. Get the fuck on that podium and read your fucking poems. Read that MFA in hamsters one. People like that one. Personally I think it exploits the controversy and divide that is innate in the concept of an MFA program, the controversy and divide that is innate in the concept of Benjamin Kunkel, and the controversy and divide that is innate in the concept of Michiko Kakutani. Actually I think most people know that. I think most people know the poem is exploiting the controversy and divide that is innate within them, a controversy and divide that in more reasoned times they try to resist, as one would resist eating Twinkies, or something, but I don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me. I read a review by Michiko Kakutani of Richard Ford’s Rock Springs last night while eating a doughnut and thought, ‘There is controversy and divide innate in this woman of Japanese descent.’ Probably it’s just me. I think most people don’t even know who Benjamin Kunkel or Michiko Kakutani are, even poetry people, most poetry people don’t read much fiction, I think. Though, again, that’s probably just me. I liked the first story in Rock Springs by Richard Ford. Have you read that? I like the ending. It ends with a lot of questions. I like that.” My hands and neck will be shaking very hard and I’ll headbutt Clayton Banes very hard by accident. One of Clayton Banes’ co-workers who is an editor for Kitchen Sink Magazine will use a copy of Kitchen Sink Magazine to staunch the blood while making a charmingly self-deprecating joke about Kitchen Sink Magazine finally having a purpose. Clayton Banes will die in the hospital two days later. The police will email me but I will distract them with links to my blog and things having to do with pre-ordering my books. One of the policemen will become a regular commenter on my blog. Later this policeman will solicit me for his literary magazine, Policeman Quarterly (or something), but in the same email will admit he doesn’t have a literary magazine, just solicited me out of loneliness, though, he will stress, through the use of italics, actually he has a wife that he loves and three children that he loves and he also loves his job, has a cheerful disposition, and can’t remember ever feeling sad in his long, happy, mostly troublefree life. He will be 65 years old. Sometimes he will post long comments on my blog posts about Richard Yates detailing how he thinks inner-city crime should be handled but I will never acknowledge anything he says in his comments on my blog. Eventually I’ll offend him by saying something about Salman Rushdie and he will email me asking me why I have to talk shit about Salman Rushdie. Then he will email me asking me "what is a Salman Rushdie, does it come breaded, or is that the other brand of frozen fish that they only sell in grocery stores in rural areas?" I will tell him that "a Salman Rushdie is a sect of monks in East Timor whose culture is based on the collective fear of writing something controversial that will get a fatwa on them and then having that be translated into Japanese and then having the Japanese translator of that text be assassinated by religious extremists." This will begin a long email correspondence about Salman Rushdie that will culminate in the police officer emailing me, “YOU HAVE NEVER MET A SALMAN RUSHDIE, YOU DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT SALMAN RUSHDIES EXCEPT ON YOUR ONE TWO-DAY TRIP TO EAST TIMOR WHERE YOU SAID YOU DIDN’T EVEN TALK TO A SALMAN RUSHDIE BUT JUST SAW ONE THROUGH BINOCULARS BRIEFLY, AND YOU’RE JUST A LITTLE BITCH. STOP TALKING SHIT ABOUT THE SALMAN RUSHDIES OR I’LL NEVER COMMENT ON YOUR BLOG AGAIN. I’LL PROBABLY STILL READ IT BUT I DON’T THINK I’LL POST AS MANY COMMENTS ANYMORE, UNLESS I GET A GOOD RESPONSE. I LIKE WHEN PEOPLE RESPOND TO MY COMMENTS.” During this time I will be suffering severe depression from a lack of friends and out of desperation, sadness, and loneliness will have begun a correspondence with an intern at One Story magazine who I will have emailed out of crippling loneliness under the pretense of asking if they take simultaneous submissions if the story has been revised a lot and had a title change. In the third email I will type, “I calculated the percentage of words that I have edited: 35.3%. In the title I used 85% different letters in a combination that a statistician could confidently call “Random,” and I deleted an entire section of the ending. Can you please ask Hannah Tinti if in this case a simultaneous submission can be allowed? Have you ever met Hannah Tinti? I think I saw her read once. I saw her read with Matthew Rohrer once, I think. Thank you for your help.” The intern will not respond to my third email but I will continue to email her almost every day and eventually "track her down" in real life over a "consistently thrilling" two-month period that will culminate in me chasing her on Sixth Avenue holding an envelope of a two-year gift subscription to The Paris Review screaming, “I got you something!” But chase her very slowly and from a distance of three blocks and screaming very quietly so that only I and a few very perceptive, cripplingly lonely, and severely-depressed Asian business students from nearby New York University can hear me.