The New Sprawling Wasteland

This poem was written in response to the Rattle® Poetry Ekphrastic Challenge for November 2023 and was ultimately not selected. You can find more information here.

https://www.rattle.com/ekphrastic/

The image that this poem was specifically written about can be found here. (November 2023 – Scott Wiggerman's “Aerial II”)

https://i0.wp.com/www.rattle.com/ekphrasis/EC23Nov.jpg?ssl=1

The New Sprawling Wasteland

Travel west from the lake waters lapping at Chicago’s sandy shores

Through a forest of metal and glass, while a winding river twists along

Connecting parks dotted between the tall statures of skyscrapers

Make your way down the arteries of rail lines and highways

Pass by the build of brick bungalows with flower boxes on the windows

Large trees that edge the avenues and make for shady lanes

Keep going to towns and old suburbs, with their ranch-style homes

Interspersed by the occasional colonials, Victorians, Tudors, or Cape Cods

Diverse dwellings inhabited by people, different and unique

Vivid, interesting, and beautiful

-

Then you hit it and you immediately know:

This is the place where everything that came before

COMES. TO. DIE.

-

Once a farmer’s field, now ploughed under to make way for giant new houses

The smell of asphalt, scorched and baking in the unrelenting sun

There is no shade, for all the trees have been chopped down

There is only a little slice of green they call a lawn

But you would be a fool to think that it is alive

It is sprayed with pesticide and herbicide

No signs of visible life anywhere, an empty wasteland

Monstrosities sprouting from ground

In a sort of “copy-paste” form of asexual reproduction

Monochromatic monotony of eggshell, ecru, and crème

And the dwellers here think themselves bold

By painting their doors in hues of beige

But never ivory, for that shade is reserved

For the behemoth SUV parked in every driveway

The ones that guzzle gas like a drunken sailor come to port

Row upon row and street upon street in a twisting, winding labyrinth

The signs and numbers on the façades are the only things that change

And the monogram of an initial on the mailbox

Indicating an identity of an individual

Now drowned in the sea of anonymity

These new suburbs grow and spread

Consuming all in their unending sprawl

Submitted under MRB