Trailer Park Shakes

by Justene Dion-Glowa

Overview

The poems in Trailer Park Shakes are direct and vernacular, rooted in community—a working-class Métis voice rarely heard from.

These poems, while dreamlike and playful, bear unflinching witness to the workings of injustice—how violence is channeled through institutions and refracted intimately between people, becoming intertwined with the full range of human experience, including care and love. Trailer Park Shakes is a book that seems to want to hold everything—an entire cross-section of lived experience—written by a poet whose courage, attention, and capacity to trace contradiction inspire trust in her words' embrace. Dion-Glowa's poems are quietly philosophical, with a heartfelt, self-possessed politic.

"Dion-Glowa's voice crackles with frank, startling insight." — Sachiko Murakami, author of Render

"A collection that should and will rattle your cage and shine a light where it is needed." — John Brady McDonald, author of Kitotam

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781771315913
Publisher:	Brick Books
Publication date:	10/01/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Justene Dion-Glowa is a queer Métis creative, beadworker and poet born in Win-Nipi (Winnipeg) and has been residing in Secwepemcú'lecw since 2014. They are a Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity alumni. They have been working in the human services field for nearly a decade. Their microchap, TEETH, is available from Ghost City Press. Trailer Park Shakes is their first full length poetry book.

Read an Excerpt

The trailer park shakes when the trains go by
I can't tell yet if its a comfort or a curse but
I always loved the sound of trains in the distance.

You can hear every word of conversation going on next door
And the other neighbours don't like weed smoke.

The heater grinds. It's so loud it could tear the roof off
But we've got a washer and dryer so I don't have to go to the laundromat anymore.

There's a skylight in the kitchen where sunlight dances onto the
floor and dazzles the kids who come over
and the stars twinkle in our eyes when the nights are clear.

Our fence is broken. Pretty badly. Same with the deck. And the stairs
But the view from here is spectacular
The river and the mountains
And the trains that shake the house.

In the back is a mountainside
The desert type
Very sandy soil though there are a lot of pines up that way. A lot of sage too
My cat plays out there
He is quite the hunter so we don't get a lot of mice in the house anymore
There're some garden beds out back too
Maybe we'll plant in the spring.

My bedroom is quite big now
It's nice to have a big space to call your own
Usually I give the kids the biggest room to share
But not this time.

I wonder if the kids know they're poor
I wonder if it has dawned on them just yet
I don't think it has
I don't think they know how close they live to ruin
I never did.

That's what a good parent is
Able to hide the worst of the situation
and bring out the best

You don't have to be rich to have a good life but it helps I guess.

I don't remember feeling poor
But I remember my dad working 3 jobs
And I remember the day I realized that even though I thought all it took was hard work to get ahead in life
it actually takes a garbage bag of weed and a lot of clients
and after 20 years
you'll still be in the shit.

But they don't tell you that.

And it's hard to remember when you get older
that no one ever really did it on the level anyway
That everything you thought you knew
about how to be an effective adult is just misinformation
That it really is just one fucked up situation after another in a never-ending loop.
But that doesn't mean the world is out to get you
It just means that's all the world has to offer at this time.

Frankly it's not surprising that no matter how steady I start to feel
The train still makes the whole house shake.

My dad used to tell me that the sound of the trains used to make him cry
but he didn't know why
Maybe intergenerational trauma got him
The way it gets all us imperfect simpletons
just trying to make it to next pay day.

When the trailer park shakes I wonder
if my mother had a trailer that shook
too
I wonder why we always end up going full circle
I wonder how it is that no matter how hard we have worked we never really make it
I wonder how at 14 she managed to raise a kid
And how 11 months later she had 2 to take care of
How she stuck by this man who knocked up a child
and had the audacity to call her wife
I wonder how she went to school and worked and fed us
Then I realize why I don't need to wonder why she fucked up so badly
None of us talk to her anymore

And one of us is already dead.

My trailer isn't much
But it's these people who make it a home
'Cause a house is just a box
Kind of like a body is for the soul.

Table of Contents

I.

Tissue 3

Blur 4

Dust Bowl Masquerade 5

Burial//Rebirth 7

Kaanookaat 8

Thistle&Thorn 9

Ruts 10

Ghost 11

Sertraline Dreams 12

My depression, my husband, and me 15

Shakes 17

Sunday best 21

Breadline 22

Traces 24

The Norm 26

Invitation 28

Meadowood Daze 30

The Van Man 31

II.

Archive 35

Din 36

Wick 37

Perch 39

Kornay 40

Shoovreu 41

The Dark Place 42

Hark! A Misandrist! 44

Crush(ed) 46

She 48

Aces 49

Vessel 53

Labour pains 55

SMS 57

Scaffold 58

Business as Usual 60

Mixed Signals 62

Protégé Concubine 64

#HotTake 66

The Slow Creeping Feeling That Everything Will Not Be Okay 68

The Gambler 70

That Snapchat Filter Makes Me Look Like a Dead Man 72

7 grams 73

That Boy 75

The One & Only 78

N8v aunties 80

Finale 83

Claim Laid 84

Acknowledgements 89

Editorial Reviews

"These poems ring out from a dusty landscape snagged by thistle and thorn, wandering in and out of food banks, prisons, queer daydreams and the harsh realities of hard living, in one nice dress. Dion-Glowa's voice crackles with frank, startling insight, swims through dream-like metaphors, is always charged with the healing power of testimony. A moving and unforgettable first collection." — Sachiko Murakami, author of Render

"As I read this work, I was taken back, time and again, to those days when I was a young street poet who had so much to say at a time where it felt like no one was listening. There are many times when sentiment needs to be expressed in the most bold and unapologetic way it can, and the brashness and frank delivery found in this work is the hallmark of a collection that should and will rattle your cage and shine a light where it is needed. These are not exploitative poems, nor are they the Victim Impact Statement of a wounded spirit. This collection is the chronicle of an eyewitness to reality, without compromise." — John Brady McDonald, Nehiyawak-Metis poet and artist, author of Kitotam

From the Publisher