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My father was a car knocker,
the handmaiden of the locomotive
as it rested, sweated in the Oak Point yard,
en route to Hartford and New Haven.
After his calloused fingers secured
her pistons, bolts, and screws,
he’d rap his iron wrench
on her corrugated door signaling
her safety to the engineer.
Royal, magisterial, her black-velvet flanks
illuminated by the fat summer moon,
she’d snort smoke, whistling her high soprano,
Tirnagog kicking up pebbles,
lapping the American miles.
And my father, an immigrant,
ebonized by her grease,
a part of it, a part of it, a part of it.
Liz is a wife, mother, grandmother, and retired English teacher; she is most proud of the alternative school she ran in the Bronx. She has five grandchildren who live on the next block; one, David, has Downs Syndrome and was born while she was grieving the loss of three family members in four months. Now she knows David came to help her heal. She has published poetry, memoirs, and short stories in Dreamstreets, Rattle, The Writer's Publishing [Canada], Literary Mama, Canadian Woman Studies, Lullaby Hearse, Slow Trains, and Small Spiral Notebook, and has received three grants from the Delaware Division of the Arts in the last two years.
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