05-29-2017, 09:39 AM
Memorial Day in Cranston Ct.
The trailers are not parked in rows so much
as they are left like cars used in a heist,
abandoned in dysfunction. The dirt
is hard-packed in the heat, not rich enough
to be brown - it’s gray, or sometimes the faded
dun of dust or a sickly olive where mold grew
when water collected in ruts from the last rain.
Patches of weeds struggle through the breaks
of dusty gravel and tire marks.
They run a sprinkler for the heat
at the far end, just before the break in the trees
where teenagers sneak off to smoke pot
or break beer bottles in a fire pit, but the Nelsons' sewer
stopped working 2 years ago
so the earth never really dries;
the stink of urine vapors up
from soft warm clay.
It is the time of year men take their shirts off
and show stretched tattoos, barely
discernible on ruddy, tired flesh.
They come to me, not on days like today -
when I am sitting outside drinking beer
and drawing fiddleheads
in the dirt and cigarette butts
with my boot tip, or throwing another empty
at the twisted, bent skirting of my trailer,
but they do come.
I lead them inside to where lop-sided furniture,
old Styrofoam food containers and disconnected
piles of belongings crowd us to the center
of the room. There is a mustard yellow sofa
with two good cushions and a chair
and one good lamp. A homemade tattoo gun,
tubs of ink, cotton balls
and a half bottle of rubbing alcohol
litter a bar table to the side.
Some trade their brother's pilfered weed
for tribal signs or barbed wire or a sword
and a cross. There is a woman that I call Marie,
she stops sometimes and offers to suck me off.
I shrug. If I let her, she will clean or bring food.
I can make out the face of the dead
son I drew along her left breast,
small but sagging forever in a grimace of pain.
Sometimes people pay, I don’t know what to charge
or what I do with money,
I never leave.
Leo brought his sister with him last week.
She’s not even twelve but her breasts press tight
against her tank top and she blushes the color of mangos
as he tells me it’s time she got some ink.
She takes off her shirt and lies face down on the couch.
She wants an avenging angel on her shoulder blade
but as I dip my head and breathe her hair,
the smell of fresh-peeled oranges,
and start to sketch into her flesh,
the only times my hands don't shake,
I trace the outline
of a butterfly.
The trailers are not parked in rows so much
as they are left like cars used in a heist,
abandoned in dysfunction. The dirt
is hard-packed in the heat, not rich enough
to be brown - it’s gray, or sometimes the faded
dun of dust or a sickly olive where mold grew
when water collected in ruts from the last rain.
Patches of weeds struggle through the breaks
of dusty gravel and tire marks.
They run a sprinkler for the heat
at the far end, just before the break in the trees
where teenagers sneak off to smoke pot
or break beer bottles in a fire pit, but the Nelsons' sewer
stopped working 2 years ago
so the earth never really dries;
the stink of urine vapors up
from soft warm clay.
It is the time of year men take their shirts off
and show stretched tattoos, barely
discernible on ruddy, tired flesh.
They come to me, not on days like today -
when I am sitting outside drinking beer
and drawing fiddleheads
in the dirt and cigarette butts
with my boot tip, or throwing another empty
at the twisted, bent skirting of my trailer,
but they do come.
I lead them inside to where lop-sided furniture,
old Styrofoam food containers and disconnected
piles of belongings crowd us to the center
of the room. There is a mustard yellow sofa
with two good cushions and a chair
and one good lamp. A homemade tattoo gun,
tubs of ink, cotton balls
and a half bottle of rubbing alcohol
litter a bar table to the side.
Some trade their brother's pilfered weed
for tribal signs or barbed wire or a sword
and a cross. There is a woman that I call Marie,
she stops sometimes and offers to suck me off.
I shrug. If I let her, she will clean or bring food.
I can make out the face of the dead
son I drew along her left breast,
small but sagging forever in a grimace of pain.
Sometimes people pay, I don’t know what to charge
or what I do with money,
I never leave.
Leo brought his sister with him last week.
She’s not even twelve but her breasts press tight
against her tank top and she blushes the color of mangos
as he tells me it’s time she got some ink.
She takes off her shirt and lies face down on the couch.
She wants an avenging angel on her shoulder blade
but as I dip my head and breathe her hair,
the smell of fresh-peeled oranges,
and start to sketch into her flesh,
the only times my hands don't shake,
I trace the outline
of a butterfly.