The seam was gray as a recollectionof the maps and typewriter,of the apartment door I closedon my husband as I said, sorry—Gray as the morning airin Dupont City full of Dupont.Gray as my hope to use this assignmentin another state to ruminate and move on—That Thursday was my dayto not talk about Fred Carter’s case.To interview Blue, an unemployed coal miner,who drove me aroundpulling over to pick up coffee,adjust the windshield wipers—and I felt sadder for the redthan the raw yellowin the hills. How to takethis virility (yes) in my heart—the politicsthat make my blood surge—and place it in the feminine land:the seams, drift mouth,strip mines, hollers.So, on a steamy autumn dayI could smell something likeOrtho cream or rubberexcept it was Duponta late Thursday afternoon.Was it this femalethat forced the men to tender moments(even art)in the shaftsor made me hope Fred into sayingwhereas the lungs are like a spongeeven as the Companyinvades his very alveoli.If I could be a virile womanI would be these sorry hillsseparate and gorgeouswhere the plain language(black lung)becomes stripped.Where the thin-seam minerguts the side of a mountain.Where some men cut open some kid’s stomachin the parking lotfor being black with a white girl.That, too, this landscape.Also, that day—watching coalpour out the tipple—was so exquisiteI just sat in the car.Some moments I stopped breathingas rain sprayed through the windowacross my cheek and sweater.Fred would never last a week in jailand they know it. I knewI was homewhen I mistook mantrip for mantrap.The men winked and offeredwanna go down?I grinned—a couple inches or a few yards?That made them ask,where you from anyway?Between sass and conversation with Blueon how he got his namewhen the other miners threw him out of the showerinto the snow—a kind of hazing—and how he paints while he watches the tvand the kidsand how I write on the subways—I knew this gray would hurtevery time I opened my grip.He’ll never come home.Fred would have a heart attackin that hole.Miners never die of natural causesin the lungs of the South—in Dupont City, Marytown, Ellenboro,Coal Fork, Burning Spring, Nitro.