The poet digs down a decade
with her plastic pen, rests by
the ancient seam, Earth’s little
little black dress boudoir-veined.
Poet and coal are looking for love,
unelectric coup de foudre.
But things proceed awkwardly.
The poet moves to the unburned bed,
can’t resist old conveniences:
metaphor, simile, desk of wood –
mocking pit lights that insist
on metered form and usage.
What’s left: tired enjambments
of surface talk, absence of mood,
the customer IDs of ghosts, a shared
cigarette after extraction.
