Antelope Valley Is Gone :: poem by Bill Haneline



	Antelope Valley Is Gone This poem is by Bill Haneline, who has witnessed firsthand the destruction of the Antelope Valley. About the Antelope Valley Up Above: The Geography of Suburban Sprawl in Southern California’s Antelope Valley — read it at Radical Urban Theory

Antelope Valley is gone

Antelope Valley — soon not to be a valley
New houses fill up the basin
Cookie cutter stamps them out furiously
Up the sides of the mountains
Only to spill over their tops
Families with screaming yuppie kids expressing theirselves
Play on sites were broken men once lived in camper shells

Where have all those wonderful collections of refrigerators gone
Locks still on their doors calling the new kids to play within
I miss every house with a dead car upside down in their yard

Now Volvo 850’s smoothly cruise westward every morning
Fitness centers brings the sweat out for a fee
Where once before jack rabbits ate dry weeds

Antelope Valley is gone

Bill Haneline, 1996
San Diego



	© Matt Jalbert 2001