Trailer Park Children Orange County

The chatter of children’s lives
poke through the leaves of a fig tree
planted in a scraggly field.

Hot, hard sun glitters
on tin trailer roofs,
surrounded by
concrete and gravel.

Across the street, a mirage
in a puzzle of metal boxes.
A real house with a second floor
and an avocado tree
that sports shade and tastes like green.

Children kick rocks
in boredom
at the trailer
park wash house.
The chug of machines
and despair hangs
in the air.

Children catch black toads
to try to breed and sell them.
hoping for a nickel for a candy bar.

Children ride their bikes or walk
to the Back Bay Ravine
without telling their parents,
build forts out of tumbleweeds.

Barefoot and dusty with bronzed skin,
the ragtag group marches
past that place, Mr. Miracles,
that sells frozen bananas on a stick
and wish for money once again.

Costa Mesa Trailer Park

And oh yeah, there was plenty
of white trailer trash to go around.
Long before the term was politically
correct.
Our local drunk trailer park pervert
posed as a tv repairman.
How we taunted him when he fell into
the large water pipe construction hole.
His grey curly hair and dark
rimmed glasses askew, he stumbled
around in his dark repairman outfit.

Feeling safe with our trailers nearby,
we felt great delight when he couldn’t
climb out of the hole.
Ran home to tell our moms.

Sharon A. Harmon is a poet and freelance writer. She has been published in Green Living, Silkworm, The Patterson Literary Review and recently in Compass Roads. She is also a freelance writer for the Uniquely Quabbin Magazine and has been published numerous times. She has recently published 2 mini-mysteries in Flash in the Can Number One and is working on stories for Flash in the can Number Two.