☀ Editor's Choice: "Seams" Kimiko Hahn

The seam was gray as a recollection
of the maps and the typewriter,
of the apartment door I closed
on my husband as I said, sorry—
Gray as the morning air
in Dupont City full of Dupont.
Gray as my hope to use this assignment
in another state to ruminate and move on—
That Thursday was my day
to not talk about Fred Carter's case.
To interview Blue, an unemployed coal miner,
who drove me around
pulling over to pick up coffee,
adjust the windshield wipers—
and I felt sadder for the red
than the raw yellow
in the hills. How to take
this virility (yes) in my heart
—the politics
that make my blood surge—
and place it in the feminine land:
the seams, drift mouth,
strip mines, hollers.
So, on a steamy autumn day
I could smell something like
Ortho cream or rubber
except it was Dupont
a late Thursday afternoon.
Was it this female
that forced the men to tender moments
(even art)
in the shafts
or made me hope Fred into saying
whereas the lungs are like a sponge
even as the Company
invades his very alveoli.
If I could be a virile woman
I would be these sorry hills
separate and gorgeous
where the plain language
(black lung)
becomes stripped.
Where the thin-seam miner
guts the side of a mountain.
Where some men cut open some kid's stomach
in the parking lot
for being black with a white girl.
That, too, this landscape.
Also, that day—watching coal
pour out the tipple—
was so exquisite
I just sat in the car.
Some moments I stopped breathing
as rain sprayed through the window
across my cheek and sweater.
Fred would never last a week in jail
and they know it. I knew
I was home
when I mistook mantrip for mantrap.
The men winked and offered
wanna go down?
I grinned—a couple inches or a few yards?
That made them ask,
where you from anyway?
Between sass and conversation with Blue
on how he got his name
when the other miners threw him out of the shower
into the snow—a kind of hazing—
and how he paints while he watches the tv
and the kids
and how I write on the subways—
I knew this gray would hurt
every time I opened my grip.
He'll never come home.
Fred would have a heart attack
in that hole.
Miners never die of natural causes
in the lungs of the South—
in Dupont City, Marytown, Ellenboro,
Coal Fork, Burning Spring, Nitro.