How do you tell your children
they’ll never get away?
Tell them their only choice

is factories or the mines,
bent heads or blackened lungs.
Amelia Earhart is a dream

my daughter won’t give up.

Sometimes I want to shake her,

tell her what small towns are,

how the coal dust coats your skin

till darkness never leaves you
and the sky doesn’t matter much

when you’re wheezing underground.
She won’t believe the woman’s dead.
She says, I think it’s romantic

to disappear. I bite my tongue
to keep from telling her
she’ll get her chance in time.