Trailer Park Kids
david staton
Saturday with trailer park kids
their busy fingers
sneaking nickels from a brown bag
stealing colored rolls of penny candy
stacking empty cans
snaking butts from bottles.
Jelly stained faces
(peanut butter bangs)
with eyes like sad fruit
watch their mother's boyfriend
scratching through the morning after
everything went upside down.
Keys on a silver cat's tail
Slinking and purring down his thighs
Another twitches over blue jeans
Into his seat pocket
The chrome rope he swung at their mom
Elegant violence: leather, face and fist
shimmering in a bare, light bulb dance.
Lipstick shrieking wounded over walls.
Swollen mascara sweat.
Such busy fingers
Wrap around the neck
of a beer,
of their mom.
Cinnamon red scrapes
on fingers
on napes.
The morning after
a black dram night
when everything went upside down
again.
.......
Saturday afternoon with trailer park kids
late sun slippery shadows nipping at Keds
scrambling over fences,
across lawns,
through ditches.
Bare-chested boys,
flat stomachs filled with
cheese sandwiches, buzz bombs and lime Koolaid
Yell
Gotcha
Not it.
Girls braid twisting
in air,
jump underneath
and over
blacktop rhythms
Sing
Cinderella
Dressed in Yella.
Ankles playing catch
and go with knees,
bouncing a yellow green
mambo in their guts.
Stomach so full,
heart a desert,
their mother has taken
three baths,
eight pills
and no phone calls.
Gonna wash That man
right out of her house.
She thinks.
And he
has sat
out front
all day.
That man.
Mother's boyfriend.
Watching those goddamn kids.
Filling his belly.
Drips of blood mixing with
splash after splash of beer
chased by minty antacids,
spinning a slow cycle.
Waiting for the black