Night Riders

Polaroid by Ruby Mae Mimbs, © 2025, Tom Pearson

If not for the mangroves and dunes, Granny and her back room, or the creeks and swamps and marshes, it might have mattered more that we had been raised on cinder block, stacked two by two under a single-wide trailer, toddling through a red-black forest of thick shag, silver-lined, plucking out curly shavings of aluminum because they laid the carpet before they cut out the windows.

When the trailer pitched in storm, a snare played by the branches of cypress, we were knocked out by the assault of cloud cannons, pelting the roof in rapid-fire–so sound was sleep, so deep our dreams, and we would ride her into midnight, the trailer with its hitch pointing forward like a prow–but that was us too. There. Then. Now.

Originally published in The Arlington Literary Journal, Issue 206, February 2025

Tom PearsonFebruary 1, 2025poem, poetry, poet, Tom Pearson, Southern gothic, contemporary, trailer park, Arlington Literary Journal, ArliJo, storms, south, florida, moody poem