What You Can See Goes On Forever

( prose poetry )


It was a wrinkle in time. When
little women raised the kids and
went to church, and the other
sex was of mice and men
gambling away the bank loans
and utility bills. It was a tale
of two cities only it was two
towns miles apart with most
the firearms socked away in
every pawn shop within a fifty
mile radius due to drinking and
carousing at the honky-tonk
bars. Anywhere east of Eden,
where the sidewalk ends, is
where everything else was
blamed on the fault in our stars.
Ya, thats’s right - give it over to
God while its catching fire.

I was called Rebecca ‘cause the
family had great expectations of
me; though being dirt-poor folk
leading a hard-scrabble life
their feelings for me were split
between pride and prejudice.

It seemed like the story of my
life ( which had begun when I
was born in 1984 on a farm in a
barn I called the animal house
as a child ), but most of the
evidence of this claim has all
gone with the wind as it tends to
do out in the country where the
land is flat and there’s nothing
to see, but what you can see
goes on forever.

Like when my great-grandpa
wandered off in his dungarees
one morning after one hundred
years of solitude, celebrating
silence, standing in the middle of
our wheat field ready for the
harvest as if in a brave new
world, but to me he looked like
the old man and the sea with
the wheat like ocean waves all
around him. The help wouldn’t
be over for another week.




Titles with authors credit used in the poem:
"Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen
“1984" by George Orwell
“Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott 
"Gone with the Wind" by Margaret Mitchell 
"The Help" by Kathryn Stockett 
"A Wrinkle in Time" by Madeleine L'Engle
"Of Mice and Men" by John Steinbeck
"A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens
"Where the Sidewalk Ends" by Shel Silverstein
"The Fault in Our Stars" by John Green
"East of Eden" by John Steinbeck 
"Rebecca" by Daphne du Maurier
"Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens
"The Old Man and the Sea" by Ernest Hemingway 
"Celebrating Silence” by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
"Catching Fire" by Sue Monk Kidd
"One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez 
"The Story of My Life" by Helen Keller 
“Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley
“Animal House” by Chris Miller