American Dream Deferred

done for the 'five word poetry' contest

American Dream Deferred

 

a

rotted

white picket fence

Reviews

[Devons]

Rotted, but still white. And still a fence. Interesting, subtly caustic symbolic representation of this so-called "dream"...The reality is much more suburban.

Which reminds me of a joke my Mum once played on me. One day I came home and she was doing the dishes, looking out the window above the sink. She said "Funny thing happened earlier on. This man came up the drive but never came to the door. After about 5 minutes I decided to go take a look, when he reappeared again, making off back down the drive with our garden gate..."
"That's odd," I said.
"Yeah," says Mum. "I would have said something but I didn't want him to take a fence."

[faryn wolff]

Superbly profound. This is an excellent description of the America of today.

[alesuriko]

Five words and you get so much out of it... it really sums up the suburban culture and how the "American dream" has been rotted away into industry and greed. Very well done and hard hitting!

[Arthur Henn]

It leads to the shredded threads of horizions bliss
escaping lost memories of yesteryear
forevermore setting boundries upon crossroads
followed...

You did well with just five words. So much can be said and written from them five words...

Art

[Naomi Montana Walsh]

This a good one..says a lot in few words..about the decay of the american dream

[Chloe..Across the Unive..]

not the dream we hoped for... but what the dream has become.
powerful .. meaningful.

Chloe

[...]

. ah! bravo! ... you so remind me of American Beauty ... not in style, composition or rendition ... but in spirit ... amazing ... just amazing ... 5 words and a universe of meaning ...

[J. Randall Dodd]

sara,

thank you for your kind review of my 5 word poems. now i look here at your work and i find it very "william carlos williams-esque". i only wish that this site would allow the ability to post text boxes. i had put together a rotated version of your poem where the individual words all stood alone as wooden fence pieces, with rotted and fence both canted to the side. it looked beautiful, but unfortunately i can't send it to you via this site. however, your poem is beautiful, i was just trying to get creative with it.

the image and meaning behind it are both very poignant. i enjoyed your work, as always.

sincerely,
jr

[Marie Harrison]

Oh I love this piece Sara, it says so much in just a few words. The first visual that came to my mind was Huckleberry Fin and Tom Sawyer white washing the fence. I also had flashes of Look Homeward Angels coming to me also. Beautiful poem, that brought wonderful thoughts to me head.