Liz Dolan

Picking Up Steam

Liz Dolan

My father was a car knocker, the handmaiden of the locomotive as it rested, sweated in Oak Point Yard, xx 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, looping the American miles. And my father, an immigrant, ebonized by her grease, a part of it, a part of it, a part of it.

A nine time Pushcart nominee in both prose and poetry, Liz Dolan has published two poetry collections. Her ten grandchildren pepper her life. Liz lives in Rehobeth Beach, Delaware.