Poem Playlist: Michelle Tea’s “A Good Thing to Say”
Every song title on the playlist starts with a word from the poem, in the order the words appear. So you can read the poem here in five seconds, or you can read it as it plays over nine hours.
This is a poem playlist. What that means is every song title on the playlist starts with a word from the poem, in the order the words appear. So you can read the poem here in five seconds, or you can read it as it plays over nine hours. But hey, you can’t rush art. Listen to the playlist for “A Good Thing To Say” here:
A Good Thing To Say
to a girl dying by the hour
as the meter ticks on the van
and the money machine shits cash
into the palms of the lucky
as i screech a rake through the days
and revise every approach,
tilt angles into graphs and cubes
that send me sprawling dizzy
in the sun waiting for another
call so i can run naked into the street
and really start to hate you for everything
you don’t allow to happen, here where
the traffic lights are and the cops and
the wires strung above the roofs like
our city’s been netted and they’re just
waiting for us all to dry up and die
and we are, and i offer up water
the most of my body, sweat and piss
and spit and you wipe your mouth
and turn, your feet on the cracking street.
Michelle Tea, 1997
from “The Beautiful: Collected Poems” by Michelle Tea. Published by Manic D Press. Used with permission. 
