TRAILER PARK SCENARIO

by Dorianne Laux

Let's say we quit our shitty jobs, get rid
of everything, cash in our retirement
and buy a dented trailer, park it near the sea,
let the salty air eat jagged holes
in the flimsy sheet metal siding
and call it good.

A couple of beat up lawn chairs,
plastic webbing disintegrating
beneath our sunburned backs.
Diet Coke in blood-colored tumblers
under a threadbare awning, tattered corners
held aloft on rusted poles.
On windy days tan sand blowing, ocean
frothy, the hollow poles pinging with grit.
Two rolled up magazines filched
from a roadside mailbox, stacks
of fifty cent books.

No dog to feed, no cats, no kids,
not even a plant, just a half-circle
of gray stones that say: This is
our dugout, our plot of beaten earth,
Kingdom of Dirt, like the moon etched
with eternal zigzag shoe patterns,
a flutterless flag.
And on Saturdays, cheap sunglasses
and flea market shanties, end-of-the-day
fruit and knobby vegetables, a balding pair
of mismatched socks.

What else? What more could we need
as the sun dips its red ass in the sea?
A little ditch-fire made from driftwood sticks,
a few ratty palms done up like floozies
in black feathers, torn fishnets,
sashaying against a violet sky.

Dorianne Laux was born in Augusta, Maine, in 1952. She worked as a sanatorium cook, a gas station manager, a maid, and a donut holer before receiving a B.A. in English from Mills College in 1988. Laux is the author of three collections of poetry: Smoke (BOA Editions, 2000), What We Carry (1994), and Awake (1990). With Kim Addonizio, she is the co-author of The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry (1997). Among her awards are a Pushcart Prize, an Editor's Choice III Award, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Laux is an Associate Professor at the University of Oregon's Program in Creative Writing.

photo: Jeanne C. Finley, bio courtesy of www.poets.org