Trailer Park Fragments by David Ensminger

Mike Young pub­lished this e‑book, Trail­er Park Frag­ments: A Place called Whis­per­ing Lanes, through his Mag­ic Heli­copter Press. I urge you to check it out. I was going to say it gives you a per­spec­tive on trail­er parks you maybe haven't seen before but that's horse­shit. It just affects me, who has nev­er lived in a trail­er park but has known a few. It's an impres­sion­is­tic set of pieces I think you'll enjoy– proems, not prose poems–because if anything's lin­ear here, it seems acci­den­tal. Great stuff at HTMLGIANT. Here's a taste:

In the long­ness of sum­mers
in the pool with the fake green glow,
the sloughed off burnt skin,
and the tinge of chlo­rine …

on the sur­pris­ing­ly smooth body
fly­ing down the slide, and the under-
sized buoys bob­bing like plas­tic eggs…
in the fence pressed togeth­er like uneasy
fab­ric, in the fresh face free of make­up,
in the swim cap and lone tree…
I dra­ma­tized a strug­gle
for human def­i­n­i­tion, a med­i­cine show
of the mind …

I used to sleep in the hall­way
with the light on. Or in my sister's
pink bed­room, next to the draw­er
with mar­i­jua­na and Play­girls, between
the David Bowie poster and the
six inch har­le­quin doll from JCPen­ney.

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