To try on a voice that risks speech because it can, must, is.’

And then the sick beats bring us one level up[1] because

it is and always has been about learning how to dance

well on the right songs, now and tomorrow. Right here.”

Still here. Check, check. In time. Feel its slow haptic surface interface

breeze lightly across our beyond ubiquitous epidermal feelpads,

brushing their synthetic neurons, the neon receptors. “‘I mean,

come on [redacted]. Rent a car. Pick up the scraps of your last

remaining archive in the desert, let your “individual voice”

run free,’” stomping into the deathscape of the present!

“‘Is he not starting to sound like some sort of nihilism junky demon,

mainlining doom horror.’” Come now. I’m not praying for tidal waves.

Hardly. “This is not a dialogue, really.” But questions remain. E.g.,

what happened to the starwhisp?[2] Do these other voices distract?

     Who cares.

     Break, crisis, explosion, volta. Bang.

---

[1] See MGMT, “Electric Feel (Justice Remix),” Pandora, July 9, 2016.

[2] It reached a point in time where the universe folded back in on itself, repeating from the beginning, over and over, until it found some way out, in a story to be told later, into this current timeline in which @realDonaldTrump has not colonized the inner planets of the solar system . . . yet.



***



Bradley J. Fest is assistant professor of English at Hartwick College. He is the author of two volumes of poetry, The Rocking Chair (Blue Sketch, 2015) and The Shape of Things (Salò, 2017), along with a number of essays on contemporary literature and culture. More information is available at bradleyjfest.com.