In Your Grandfather's Garage: Moline, Illinois by: Jason Kahler

A Coca-Cola clock
and a snack fridge, half-stocked,
rainbows in oil lay captured by sand
and more oil, still, always, stained hands

that quaked with your grandfather's history.
Those hands patiently taught me carburetors.
On the wall, sun-stained calendars
never advanced past their final Decembers.
Screws and washers waited in lidded baby food jars.

Each visit, he checked the fluids of our car.
Warm, the engine clicked
while Papa declared each piece fit
like the tools he hung from his peg board
or like this town's stretching fields of corn

planted across narrow rows, drawn
straight spaces
old men made their own.