By Will DiNola

*With a perceived lack of support from the New York arts community, a viral bodega gaffe video, and an urge to be experimental in campaign communication methods, NYC Mayoral candidate Andrew Yang tries his hand at poetry in an attempt to win over the “millennial, hipster crowd.”*

i <3 nyc
by andrew yang

i love the city of new york city
as the great song by frank sinatra says—
start spreading the news,
i am running for mayor there
but i am not actually leaving today
i will be living upstate for right now in my usual weekend home
zoom-school with two kids in a two bedroom apartment?
not gonna happen for the yang family
but way to go for all the families in nyc that are doing that!
new yorkers are resilient
this is a concept i came up with, new yorkers being resilient
perhaps this should be integrated into my campaign slogan
but, how cool, the apartments there
how cool to live in a small space honestly
very sleek, very minimal (which i love because i am a big technology guy)
as a young, single person i would love that
with a family not so much
also i should mention that i love all of the varying numbers of burrows that nyc has
or is it boroughs?
ok alexa said its boroughs
also the acronym nyc is great because it is shorter and therefore more streamlined
(this is one reason I wanted to run for mayor there)
if you recall i love acronyms
(my potus campaign slogan was the word/acronym MATH: make america think harder,
we put it on a bunch of hats and such, very nyc of us, this having merch with acronyms i mean)
anyway i love all of the boroughs equally
although i dislike queens slightly more than the others
because they decided not to put amazon’s headquarters there
which was an error on their part
that would have been really cool and tech-futurist oriented
and also is long island one of the boroughs? too many islands in my opinion
don’t get me wrong, i love them, it’s just hard to keep straight
i love all of the parks: the main one (I’m forgetting) which is sort of in the middle of nyc,
and then all of the various other ones which have circle or square in their names
all really nice and fun for “city lyfe”
not as fun to be running for mayor during the pandemic because there is less stuff happening there
sort of ghost town vibes i am hearing from here, upstate
speaking of ghosts, apparently my house upstate where i’m living is also haunted!
so we’re similar in that way, nyc and i
not that i haven’t been there in person since the pandemic
i have, i was just inside mainly, not as much walking around
i took an uber out once to visit a bodega!
a bodega is essentially a corner store where you can actually go out and hand pick what you want to buy!
yep, pretty cool
they have the necessities: amazon gift cards, ipad styluses, bushels of bananas
(and a yang favorite: wool scarves)
i love saying bodega
makes me feel like a true new yorker
which basically i am (i know what bodegas are)
everyone moves to nyc to become famous anyway
not that i’m trying to do that
(i already ran for potus, can’t get much more famous than that, ha ha)
what i mean is that i’m actually going there (well not now but eventually) in order to help with stuff
so please vote for me
like i said on twitter, i generally just want things to work better for people
(oh, and in light of stimulus checks pending, don’t forget i invented the concept of government payments, UBI, yet another incredible thing and acronym)

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Will DiNola is a comedian/musician that focuses on radical joy. Co-creator of health satire podcast, Beyond Being Well.