Democratic Vistas
by Andrew Kenower
The present: lack of actuals with excess fringe. The painting
looked better at the office. EBT doesn’t cover unregulated boner pills at the
corner store. Art du city trash is over! If you want it. This is the part where
I set the scene and talk about my feelings. Who are you window dressing for?
Democratic Vistas
We traded the agents for agency in order to speak from a great
height. But our voices diminished because they didn’t solve the food problem or
serve as a means of forgetting the food problem. And so we stepped down from
the height. No uncertain terms abounded but we could no longer adopt them. Our
totalized binaries felt like coin flips for who took care of the dock sex this
week – who pretended we took the puppy to the farm. Illustrate the scene with
like some dead leaves or something. Oh how we thought that we could lead if we could know!
Democratic Vistas
Appeals to reason lay fallow – it’s power having been subsumed by
the mores of long culture. God being unable to communicate in a single language
was lost. Heads bowed and remained in that position. The pervasive homeland
zeitgeist was still understood in terms of entitled scraps not belonging to or
dependent on a whole. Whales continued to sort of exist. But the ambience of
our security would destroy their brains.
The cause gets lost in fashion.
Democratic Vistas
The cargo cults are waiting for the GIs to come back with the
goods. This would be humorous except for the widely held assumption that our
redemption resides in a body beyond our own. That the final leader is waiting
in the wings. That this final power could be known and interpreted. That a
singular translation could be disseminated by a shared media. That people
really want to live forever? In the summer after high school with their
parents?
Democratic Vistas
Teenage sass ruled the day and so we went in our corners.
Ancillary bright spots caroused in sweaty basements to the tuneless brays of
our feeble representatives. To destroy oneself with deafening sheets of noise.
To be absorbed by others in this destruction. To stink and to fall and to wail.
We had to perform our difference just to seem real. Though our positions were
left couched by this performance. That the terms of our discussion could not be
articulated without the caveat of our being freaks.
Democratic Vistas
The committee approves the ocean of lemonade, acquisition of new
moons. A tremulous affecting light surrounds the decision. In the evenings,
quiet reflective dinners with the family. Ciders exfoliating the day. We
ameliorate with collective hope. Opposition to the lemonade never existed.
Babies clean themselves.
Democratic Vistas
There were tortured glances across a flat gray field of the
undeservingly proud. We made eyes for the words refused to come. And when they
did, it was mostly as a whispered, “I know.” Dancing was encouraged but we
struggled (the boys would jump together or go too fast). Our bodies had never
been trained in cooperative aesthetics, rather those beyond the realm of sport.
Our bodies about math and faking it and lifting and dodgeball; our bodies about
skin crème and oxy pads.
Democratic Vistas
Unfinished developments of the late oughties bereft of teenage
bong smoke, finger sandwiches, hidden condoms, and hair dye. Suburban ruins as monuments
to themselves. That this crushing is not endlessly reproducible. Sacramento is
in remission and the pavement’s already warping. Torn Tyvek festooning the
battlements. No saving grace but a reason to say it. Proof that even though the
dream turns to your ex making out with your dad, you still get to wake up and
it was all just.
Democratic Vistas
After we learned to dance it was kinda scary. Like, no one could
keep their shirts on and we never ran out of booze. All that mojo that never
got out of our early 20s filling the room like vinegar stink. Like getting
whipped in the face by a sweat soaked Jerry curl. You didn’t know why but that
question was hella irrelevant by the time you asked. Sometimes jealousy and
better sense happened so we had to cut that shit out. But we got a commune in
the end.
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Poet Andrew Kenower curates the online audio archive A Voice Box and is co-curator of the Woolsey Heights Reading Series. He is the principle designer for Trafficker Press.
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