From the yellowed front page

She looks at me, mouth a familiar

hard line.

Hair pinned back, I see her black news print eyes

behind the lens of eighties eyeglasses.

Across the street another emptying factory.

Out of focus skeleton trees.

My mother and her friends

stand with signs and symbolism.

No tools and engine parts, wears a blazer

over oil-stained jeans and steel toed boots.

Faded April in Ashland is always cold but they

stay, protest anyway.

What better thing to do in the afternoon with

my mother’s place on the assembly line

packed up neatly and sent to Mexico.

Today I leaf through her scrapbook,

and on the opposite page is

my mother’s pink slip.

I see her now and we talk

about American cars,

and sometimes she looks beyond me,  back

to the chassis line.