Engineering classes taught me
a lot of things I rarely use,
like atmospheric pressure
and pressure differentials
and differential equations
and equations of momentum
and moments of inertia
and inertial frames of reference
and A-frame trusses.

Hypersonic shock tubes
and shell and tube heat exchangers
and heat capacities
and capacitor dielectric constants
and constant gravitational acceleration
and acceleration from rest
and how to function without rest.

But the main thing I learned
in engineering classes
was how to bang my head against a wall
taking into account
the material,
the structure,
the thickness,
the strength,
of the wall
until,
undamaged,
I pop out the other side.

That, I use every day.

Release, then let go—
Stuck, there is no more
Kindness to give, empty
Plateau.

I took off my wedding ring last night
because the sudden onset June humidity had inflated my fingers
though admittedly
    I was troubled by its shiny presence the other night
    when my hand was in his.
Quite suddenly
I decided to leave it off.
Like so many aspects of my marriage
    it wasn’t ever mine.

When Grandma died, her engagement ring was deconstructed, its individual diamonds dispersed to daughter and granddaughters.
Much like we divided and negotiated every bit of nostalgic paraphernalia in the house,
from the old concert ticket stubs to the cross-stitched framed depiction of all of us grandchildren.  
But I kept her wedding band
    – there was no bickering there, I was the only one it would fit.  
And it fit like it was made for me.
I started wearing it
as a fragile connection to her
long before
I called myself anyone’s wife.

She had met you
and I assume approved of our pairing
but there is so much we didn’t ask, will never know.
So much of her that (maybe I imagined) I could see pulsing just under the surface
    – as she sat at the head of that impossibly dark wooden dining table watching the birds at     her feeder –
resides only there.  Stirred into her coffee, exhaled into unconsciousness with her cigarette smoke.
Whatever lessons she may have had to impart from her two marriages
remain in the silent loss.

Though maybe it’s circling back to me now.
After wearing it these past 18 years
I can no longer see this gold band as anything more or less
than an unfortunate symbol of surrender and subdued self-sacrifice.
Generational compromise.

Mom says I’m more my grandma’s daughter
    than she ever was.
As I’m unearthing my own enshrouded truths
I look for hers, too.   

Morning brings the sun’s revealing fire

to an urban street of warehouse stairs,

old graffiti on a concrete bollard.

Two men stop to survey work done

yesterday, to be repeated today.

The overwhelming grayness, broken

by their faces, by sand making its way

to a dull river under a black bridge,

is mirrored in two cars destroyed

by makeshift bombs, bottles of gas

with cloth wicks, thrown in hate by

brothers against brothers now Others,

proof there will never be a civil war.

(after an untitled 2007 photograph from the portfolio, “When Brothers Fight,” by Dominic Nahr)

My earliest memory of you
has to be at the pool.
Summer was always our time
long days
sun, sweat, and chlorine
buttered noodles
Ham and cheese.
As far back as I can recollect
spinning my tape until the reels click empty
you’ve been my home away from home.
Until it wasn’t safe for you to live alone.

My mom and dad weren’t together
at any age I’ve the capacity to remember.
You and grandpa
were the couple I based
my expectations of love on.
Deep, strong, non-demonstrative love.
Like a midsummer oak
towering, mighty, beautiful.
I only saw you fight once
in nearly twenty years.
He had invited folks over
you didn’t have time to clean.

You were five foot even
if even that.
I learned you loved Elvis
you liked to dance
and to laugh.
You taught me how to drive
both stick and automatic.
You taught me to make sausage gravy.
I still make it, the same way
no measurements
no recipe
just love and feeling
and a grandiose amount of pepper.

When you lost your husband
and I a grandfather
you became most special to me.
You were my best friend in those years.
As the medicines increased
and the mazes in your mind lengthened
when you struggled with the rules of Phase Ten
after we’d played together for years.
My small family tree was blossoming
I saw one family ending
as another was just beginning.  
I remember asking “how will I love
the boys as much as Vivian?”
‘You’ll love them all. The same.
In their own special ways.’
Like most advice you delivered
it has rung true.
I think that’s one of the biggest things I miss
now that you are no longer completely you.
My confidante and my advisor
who never let me leave with an un-ironed shirt.
My biggest fan and honest critic.

I know you don’t like your full governmental
hell, you went by your middle name.
But Wilma is close to William
and my boy will always carry it forward,
just the same.
Each year has pushed us farther apart.
I still remember that Thanksgiving
I took the whole week off
just to spend it with you.
We swung on the porch
and took in the stars
I know we had some ice cream
butter pecan
diabetes be damned.
You got to meet my wife
and get to know her before the wrinkles
that once brought you such concern
deepened into ravines, and shadowed your face.
I see confusion in your eyes now
more than your spark or your fire.
But when I bring the kids ‘round
The sparkle is back
and you are yourself again.
It’s poignant that such small things
bring about great change.
The intersection
of a star with decaying orbit
and newly born planets
astronomical splendor. 

Saturday at dawn,
down to the farmers market
by the old courthouse,

city center,
in a square we all
once called

“cheapside”

it was the former
site of another
market

named by white
landowners

to advertise the
affordability

of strong
and well bred
human stock.

Now the name
is Tandy Park.

I’ve come here
to sell the wooden bowls
I’ve cobbled in my shop

and to sing and play
guitar.

If you correct me
when I call it such
and say,

“oh you mean cheapside”

I will calm my rage
and explain

Henry Tandy,
born a “slave”,
close to here,
in Estill county,

became,
not only
the finest
stonemason
Kentucky ever saw,

but also the owner
of the construction company
who created this fine
example of
architecture

richardsonian
romananesque,

our old courthouse
of local limestone,

intricate with gargoyles
and frills of fleur de lis,
scrolls of icanthus leaves,
detail after detail
every soffit,
every frieze,
carved exquisitely,
capped recently
with a new copper roof.

Once as a kid my dad
had reason to inspect
the air conditioners
in the attic, and so we
scampered up the
access ladder
to emerge into the
cúpula,

it was the best view
I have seen of this city,
on a Saturday morning
forty years before,

then I was yet to know,
gazing from the perch
above the square,

had no idea,
that a black man
risen up from heinous
bondage, had
placed in mortar,
less than thirty years
after the civil war,

the stone rail
on which we
confidently leaned,

or even that the name
“cheapside”
was meant to demean.

And so as the scents of
farm raised
sausages
and fresh cut
flowers and coffee
fill the square,

I arrive with the farmers
already here,

vegetables arranged
like little dolls 
colorful and plump
loaves of bread baked
the night before
young tomato plants
waiting for a side yard
garden,

a man
still sleeping
on the steps.

I fetch my wares
onto my stand,
a kiosk in the sun,
buy a bouquet
of wild flowers
to place in some vases

I have made.

Ready now,
for market day.

I take out my harmonica,
and start to play,

an old spiritual
“Wade in the Water”.

A child comes over
in a dirty sundress

and picks up one of
my bowls,

I smile between notes
and know,

someday to greatness
this little girl will grow.

               nail polish pretty
     though gardeners always know
               only paint the toes

                               waters

of annihilation

the body

                        a sheet of glass

        turns to wax                            hardens

        to tallow    

                    the sheath of a knife

                                                            the inevitable

catastrope

        across leagues                    of snow                    and                    desert

                                    those great wars

this monster 

the body

On Illness, Virginia Woolf

Fourth grade,
gifted program,
the teacher taught us how
to write cinquains for Mother’s Day.
Here mom.  

Cinquain,
a crappy form,
copyright Adelaide Crapsey.
For real that was her name, Crapsey.  

Ripoff,
American
faux haiku, syllabic—
two four six eight two syllables
cinquain.  

It’s lost,
the staplebound
chapbook the teacher made
of cinquains, my long gone first poem,
mother  

of mine,
but I remember
that I used the word old
to describe my thirty-one year
old mom.  

Mother
loving caring
has a job so she can’t
be part of the carpool, nice, old
mother.  

Something
like that, not true
and crap as poetry,
but at nine old was no insult,
mother.  

I showed
her my first poem
and looked up expectant
and she ripped the towel rack down
angry,  

hollered
I guess, to you
I’m nothing but an old
mother. I was just nine years old,
mother.  

My poem
wasn’t true. She
wasn’t caring, loving,
nice. I’ve looked everywhere for the
right words.  

My tears
are unmanly
but part of me’s still nine
and confused. Well, now we’re both old,
Mother.