Kentucky is Wider + Other Short Stories
Jon RoketReview by Alyce Wilson
Don't be misled by the title: Jon Roket does not write traditional
short stories. Rather, he writes a combination of innovative flash fiction,
poetry and prose poetry, reminiscent of William S. Burroughs meets John
Lennon.
Roket subtitles his collection "The Rise and Decline of American Labor in the Working and Not So Working Classes." In the first section, "Estwing," he tells the story of a Cuban immigrant, Emma. Using stream-of-consciousness, he manages to get inside her thoughts:
So it's just shoulder to shoulder on oil spills, grease traps, and Greyhound buses that Emma has got to hitch because you can't hitchhike on America on Albuquerque on highways back to Cuba, of all places. ... You can, however, have border concerns and Standard Oil, molten industry, smoke bombs, Latino panels, discussions, stock broken neckties, vaudeville, and tobacco.
Emma gets caught up in a world "more minimum than wage," trying to find a place for herself, a Latina, in the United States, finally settling on a road trip to a new life in the Midwest:
Look for the billboards lining your trip. See the script in which CocaCola or the block letters of Michelin are taught to your sense of direction. Count the filling stations, look for their better half. Have them life your car or work beneath to drain the oil. Listen for the full service bell to ring, but don't wait long. Soon you'll see about people.
The second section, "Chicago," comprises a series of slice of life poems about different scenes there, from a park to a coffee shop, from buses to suburbia, contemplating middle class and working class life in the city: "I have to get about my own things as a plain talking man might / explain it, slow, deliberate, arduous, and straight forward like / a push. Knock the dust out of the erasers."
In "Cornel," he follows the intersecting lives of a bartender. a shoplifter and the shoplifter's woman, all living equally aimless and dissatisfying lives.
And in the final section, "Faulty," he follows the reaction of a man named Gene Faulty, whose identity is subsumed in the objects that surround him, whether Oldsmobiles or calculators or old typewriters. Faulty is so jaded with his life that even when the TV news predicts flooding downtown, his flat reply is, "This is not how floods are to begin. Really."
Roket is also a songwriter who has released two albums, and his storytelling is lyrical in its focus on imagery, on fresh and engaging twists of language. And yet, his work is deeply rooted in genuine emotion. Rather than traditional short stories, these pieces read like intricate, twisted dreamscapes from which emerge truths.
Jon Roket, 2004; ISBN: 0-9710575-0-8