Trailer #9 By Melissa A. Chappell

The Rising Phoenix Review

April 7

Trailer #9

The trailer park down the highway
is a boy with a sallow face and hollow eyes,
with stubbornness still clinging to that
seventies retro look,
the weeds growing into, or out of black holes,
once windows.
Pink and green metal siding,
having long accepted the sun's abuse,
and forgottenness.
No one sees them anymore.
Except me,
who remembers Larry,
in the too-small clothes,
from Trailer #9,
who sat next to me on the yellow bus,
the hot, sticky vinyl seats–
brown like the seat in the
principal's office,
comparing lunch boxes,
sharing leftovers.
Getting off the
big yellow bus
that crawled and
spit us out one by one,
I watched him
meet his sulking mother,
rumpled, hand on hip,
cigarette, dangling from one
corner of her mouth,
smoke curling,
having just departed her
bed, heavy with sweat,
remnant vocalizations, and
Old Spice.

Come summer, I saw Larry
no more.
Time slowly deconstructed
Trailer #9.
My memories of him were
charred beneath the sun's
cruel hand,
until I passed by the pink and
white shattered trailer just today,
black eye holes staring at me.
He is still there,
that sallow-faced boy,
hundreds of them,
with clothes-too-small,
ill-fitting dreams,
hollow eyes
staring off into a
thousand vinyl visions,
unseated by
power deciding from
leather upholstered chairs.
It's all there, in the smashed
metallic pink siding of
Trailer #9, whose stare is
unflinching, and whose
gashes unhealing.
Yet all who pass by here,
see nothing.

By Melissa A. Chappell

Biography:

Melissa A. Chappell is a poet living in rural South Carolina where she enjoys a rural lifestyle. She gains much inspiration from the forests, birds, and wildflowers. He plays guitar, sings, and is adept at the piano as well. She hopes to travel to Spain one spring.