You can’t have nothing clean.

I scrubbed like a crazy woman

at Isom’s clothes that first week

and here they come off the line, little black

stripes wherever I’d pinned them up

or hung them over—coal dust settles

on the clothesline, piles up

like a line of snow on a tree branch.

After that, I wiped down the clothesline

every time, but no matter, you can’t

get it all off. His coveralls is stripy

with black and gray lines,

ankles of his pants is ringed around,

like marks left by shackles.

I thought I’d die that first week

when I seen him walk off to the mine,

black, burnt-looking marks

on his shirt over his shoulders, right

where wings would of folded.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2004 by Diane Gilliam Fisher from her most recent book of poems, Kettle Bottom, Perugia Press, 2004. Poem reprinted by permission of Diane Gilliam Fisher and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2014 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.