Poetry
Continuous Miners
By Sheila Carter-Jones
Out of dirt, dust and soot they came. The dead.
My father among them rising up out of that
black hell. His lungs still filled with fibroid
chunks of flesh turned bituminous rot. Hard
as concrete is hard as a head that calls
breathing in continuous dark family tradition.
He kept going down, down, down, into that hell-
hole. Black. Begotten and begetting. One after
another my brothers followed footsteps down
and found our daddy after he fell wicked dead.
Eventually and too soon they too folded black
wings. Were hoisted up in the cage of last breath.
Wire, rope, and pulley moaned like a death rattle
on the clock. On the swing-shift of the dead
suffocated by black lung disease. Now ghost,
ghoul, specter, disembodied spirits wander
the town. Pick and shovel illuminated by hardhat
light of a second coming.
Continuous miners. Hell-bent for the good life.
Without need for breath four black apparitions—
father and his boys take the low road. Stay in line.
None jump their turn past Mr. Skinny or Mr. Jimmy
dragging his wooden leg. All are going down
to the Baptist Church dressed in their Sunday best
for their last chance to dig for redemption.
Sheila Carter-Jones
Sheila L. Carter-Jones is the author of Three Birds Deep (winner of the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Book Award), the chapbook Blackberry Cobbler Song, and Every Hard Sweetness (BOA, 2024) She is a fellow of Cave Canem, Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop and a Walter Dakin Fellow of the Sewanee Writer’s Conference. Her poetry has been published in numerous anthologies and journals.