Tall Trees Mobile Home Park by Stephen Barile

I.

A shady, forgotten 6-acres

near the town of Malaga.

51 lots, 249 residents,

the Manager in #45,

established in 1950

when trailers proliferated.

A disregarded island

of dilapidated low-income shelter.

80’ tall Mexican fan-palms,

rows of oleanders,

mulberry trees

with thick-trunks,

propane tanks,

and wooden screens.

Encircled by Maple Avenue,

Golden State Boulevard,

a scrap-metal yard,

a manure plant,

a propane business,

a service station,

market, and coffee-shop.

North Central Canal,

Santa Fe railroad-tracks,

and Purity Oil Sales.

II.

“The rent’s cheap”

--a resident dries her family’s laundry

on the chain link fence with razor wire—

this place of the desultory

and deleterious,

the afflicted underclass,

prostitutes of low-wage labor.

Reprobate, gaunt,

and haggard folk, dusty,

callow, and leathery,

hands like bird-claws.

Sandhillers,

piney woods people,

hard-scratch scavengers,

stray goats.

The worthless and discarded

products of slavery.

III.

150 Mixtec Indians from Oaxaca,

more than half the residents in the park

spoke neither Spanish nor English

---no one told them about it--

from 1934-1974, Purity Oil Sales,

next door, reconditioned waste-oil

on 7-acres. Used oil, stored oil,

oil byproducts in storage tanks

and sludge-pits on site,

waste pits and seepage,

oils, grease, pesticide

oozing off site.

Or a fire in 1975,

or the death of a pet dog

in the blackened muck,

or the unusable land sold

at auction for back taxes.

VI.

A breeze from the south

blows toxic fumes,

otherwise a stench wafts

where dozens of children live.

Rainwater runs into the park,

children play in it.

Author Bio: Stephen Barile, a Fresno, California native, was educated in the public schools, and attended Fresno City College, Fresno Pacific University, and California State University, Fresno. He is a long-time member of the Fresno Poet's Association. Stephen Barile taught writing at Madera Center Community College. He lives and writes in Fresno. His poems have been published extensively, including Tower Poetry, The Heartland Review, Metafore Magazine, Ovunque Siamo, Rio Grande Review, The Packinghouse Review, Undercurrents, The Broad River Review, The San Joaquin Review, Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Beginnings, Pharos, and Flies, Cockroaches, and Poets.