Clean Coal Burn belongs in the tradition of James Wright, whose poems of coal mines and slag heaps nevertheless reveal love of a scarred but resilient land. In these poems beauty is found in unlikely places such as the haze over a corn field or the words of a man whose throat has been destroyed by black lung disease but who writes that there is beauty in the afterbirth of a sheep which steams in the spring snow “as if the land were alive.” While there is death—of miners or parents—there is also resurrection—in the new growth and new generations.
— Deborah Fleming
Distress Signals


After Another School Shooting
I find a puddle of clouds on the sidewalk
and bow down to get a closer look.
​
A jet's contrail slices across the puddle
as if incising it for dissection.
​
Ants along the edge dip their pincers
in, microscopic ripples radiating
​
from all sides before colliding in the middle.
The sun appears from beneath a cloud just in time
​
to be snuffed out by the boot of a pedestrian
who couldn't care less whether
​
the world is right-side up or upside down.
​
I
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