Image courtesy HBO
I’m at a Bernie Sanders rally in the insatiable buffet of the Rust Belt. Otherwise known as Buffalo. Otherwise known as any city that matches with a Great Lake on Tinder.
But Bernie’s not even here. Rather, it’s a cardboard cutout of Larry David that someone duct taped to an old tree in the middle of a flowerless parkway.
The crowd is pretending it’s not a cardboard cutout though. Enthusiasm like this reanimates the dead. Or at the very least, suspends belief.
I want to scream out, “Bernie doesn’t wear sneakers! That’s the creator of Seinfeld! He’s not even saying anything!”
But I’ll do anything to change how things are. Bernie’s a symbol now. He doesn’t need to speak.
Thankfully, it’s not too windy. So the socialist spitball isn’t swaying from left to right then back again like someone you can’t trust. It’s still cold though and there’s a little bit of snow on the ground. Frostbite with human features. Despite all that, this rally feels pretty, pretty, pretty good.
Before long, we’re all chanting in unison. But it sounds like a garbled mess. Like all the world’s worker bees living in a small, one-room apartment learning how not to die. Repeatedly asking one another, “Where’s our Queen?”
In times like these, nothing compares to the buzz we get when we reattach our stingers and attempt to make the world a better place. Running into supermarkets and setting fire to all the boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios. Because their mascot, BuzzBee, is a cruel joke. A reminder that everything is probably hopeless and we can’t live like that.
As I look around the parkway, I notice a lot of cat t-shirts and work boots. And I can’t help but think of my parents. How my brilliant mom was so grief stricken after all her cats died that she shrank herself down to the size of a potato chip. Then she climbed into the murderous litter box and disappeared forever, leaving behind only the faint smell of salt and vinegar every time I step into a room.
Then there was my dad, who lost his mind when his light was gone and took his confusion and carved a celestial hole into a can of SpaghettiOs. Then it was a telescope. Then he was naked except for his work boots. Then suddenly he was perched on the patchy roof like a gargoyle staring into space. Then he, too, disappeared forever.
I never got to say goodbye. But maybe this is how a revolution starts.
Suddenly it’s quarter to eleven when the storm starts. The wind is a piece of time being taken from you. The cardboard cutout is ripped from its tree. Hope looks like a runaway kite and no one pulling the string. Everyone is screaming or laughing, it’s hard to tell. And all I can do is reach into my pocket for the cigarettes that aren’t there, because I’ve recently quit, and start humming the theme to Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Then suddenly it’s an out-of-body experience. Everyone at the rally, it’s like they’re chopping off their legs of debt. I want to scream out, “Don’t we all have work in the morning?” But the words don’t come out.
Because I, too, am now a cardboard cutout. It’s exhilarating, I must admit, watching all the chanting torsos crescend into twilight. Is this what the American Dream looks like? Rivers with nowhere left to go? An ocean if we cry enough tears? A party on the beach and a case of mistaken identity?
But this is all in my head.
This is what’s really happening: I’m very depressed, glued to my couch and binge-watching Curb Your Enthusiasm. I’m eating a box of Honey Nut Cherrios and Bernie Sanders keeps texting me about super PACs and big pharma plowing money into Pete Buttigieg’s campaign.
I don’t know what I can do about that. So I put my phone under a throw pillow and get up to go use the bathroom. On the way there, I glance out the window at the house across the street. A cardboard sign on the front lawn reads:
POOL TABLE
HOSPITAL BED
$100.00 EACH
Once upon a time, there was an Obama sign in the same exact spot.
They say if you want to change your life, change your environment. So I imagine runaway kites flying into the fire and how the light is beautiful. Like a Saturday night that never ends. Bernie Sanders or Larry David, it doesn’t matter, riding atop an over-sized BuzzBee and trying to catch us all.
Justin Karcher (Twitter: @justin_karcher, Instagram: the.man.about.town) is a Best of the Net- and Pushcart-nominated poet and playwright born and raised in Buffalo, NY. He is the author of several books, including Tailgating at the Gates of Hell (Ghost City Press, 2015). He is also the editor of Ghost City Review and co-editor of the anthology My Next Heart: New Buffalo Poetry (BlazeVOX [books], 2017).