Where I come from coal is king
or at least used to be. But since
they broke the union, sucking
ass is how men keep jobs.
Cheap bumperstickers holding
rusting pick-ups together
proclaiming Friends of Coal
that payroll staples to their
checks to justify a slow
suffocation for the old men in
front of the nursing home at the
edge of town, where a mine tipple
staggered thirty years ago.
Slumped in wheelchairs, gulping
breaths, nodding out in slowly
settling particles of night.
David Gross is the author of five chapbooks, Cup of Moon (Bull Thistle Press, 2000), What We Never Had (tel-let, 2004), Because It Is (tel-let 2005), Pilgrimage (Finishing Line Press, 2009), and Little Egypt (Flutter Press, 2017). His poems and essays have appeared in journals such as Big Muddy, Blue Collar Review, Cape Rock, Common Ground Review, Hummingbird, Kentucky Review, Modern Haiku, Naugatuck River Review and Snowy Egret. He lives with his wife on a small farm in the hills of southern Illinois.
An elegy to both the men and the way of life. Well done.
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