I accidently knocked over
the Singer sewing machine,
an old black metal one I found
in a junk store.
It sits on my front stoop,
yard art, I call it.
All the neighbors stare walking by,
and only one has asked,
why do you have a sewing machine
on your steps?
Or the neighbor who uses it
in her directions, as in,
go 2 houses past the sewing machine.
But today that 40 lb machine
fell on its side,
and I thought of you,
and what you might think
in these dark days of our republic.
You, who raised me with all your
fiery rhetoric about democracy,
who used a Singer sewing machine
to put food on our table,
and kept sewing even when your
finger got pulled under the needle
and you slowly turned the wheel
and until it came out,
wrapped it with a white cotton strip
the red so bright
as you kept sewing.

Abigail Warren lives and works in Western Massachusetts. Her poetry has appeared in Tin House, Delmarva Review, Hawai'i Pacific Review, and numerous other journals. Her essays have been published in SALON and Huffington Post.