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Anthony DeGenaro
All I Know of Coal
after Savannah Sipple
the world long cut in two by a river: god thread,
Her needle sewn in the ore regurgitated back into steam
I didn’t have to but breathe in the coal long hung above
our valley—longer still after those fires went out, still
our stomachs endless in their thirst for rage & for over
for steam & for sediment, that, all sunken below more
of a muscle than a river—easier to imagine more than
jobs, some flowing thing alive.
About the writer:
Tony DeGenaro is a writing teacher at University of Detroit Mercy and youth arts instructor in Southeastern Michigan. He is a casual runner, baseball, and pop culture fan, and proud doggie dad to Desi the Dachshund.
Image: Among the Coal Pits, Staffordshire by John Keeley (1849-1930). Watercolor. 9.5 x 9 inches. Before 1931. Public domain.
OJAL Art Incorporated, publishing since 2017 as OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters (O:JA&L) and its imprint Buttonhook Press, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation supporting writers and artists worldwide.
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