Painting by M. Benjamin Thorne

I think my father secretly
wanted to be a painter;
he’d talk about retirement,
stock market pressures behind him,
and buying paints and canvas, maybe.
His once-thought-lost high school art,
preserved in framed collages, featured
dazed Don Quixotes, weeping Vietnam vets.
It’s odd to think about, the armors he donned
at various points to suit his need: leather jacket
for the street trouble-seeker; varsity coat
in football season; smock for art class;
pin-stripes and tie for Merrill Lynch.
The last he wore longest, and heaviest
I think. But when you come dirt poor
from West Virginia to Wall Street, you need
some heraldry to prove you belong,
some shield against ridicule and scorn.

Mornings meant shined shoes and tied knots;
evenings a collapse into silence and cigarette haze,
his ironed shirt and Brooks Brothers shorn
for sweats and crinkled newspaper wall.
Sometimes his eyes peered over the crenelation,
and rarely, defenses lowered, I’d see a smile—
and what beautiful vistas that simple stretch
of tired muscles sketched in my eager heart.



M. Benjamin Thorne is an Associate Professor of Modern European History at Wingate University. Possessed of a lifelong love of history and poetry, he is interested in exploring the synergy between the two. His poems appear or are forthcoming in Griffel, The Westchester Review, Rising Phoenix Review, Feral, Gyroscope Review, and Molecule. He lives and sometimes sleeps in Charlotte, NC.