Mack Granite

W. R. Stoddart

Mack Granite is a heavy-duty truck used for hauling coal from mines. It’s a common sight along winding, steep, and narrow rural roadways. The braking system is notorious for the loud, staccato roar that echoes through the deep valleys of Appalachia.

She folds hands around the inhaler
sheds her coal-thinned air
tries to recall the earthy prayer

listens to a-cracklin’ song
hissin’ from the jukebox 
under smoke-yellowed tin ceilin’

redwood bar cigarette scarred
albuterol and ash trays
she unfolds bucks and fins

dirt under finger nails 
bluish-green veins splay
shape the liver-spotted skin

furrowed over idle hands
like a tactile map peels
a five from the dole

the bartender leans into her
veils his nose with the fiver
draws in the smell

winks his dead eye
waves the bill 
like the Fourth a-July

close as tooth rot
and beer-bloated paunch
his lips brush her ear

like wings of a butterfly
flutters her some verse
in Appalachian prosody:

Mack Granite rolls empty
rumbles through dark country
no brakes, no mercy, deadly

over yin and yonder
through deep hollers
lives to squander

he cuts the sudsy head
with his index finger
she tipples her beer

belches a loud amen!
takes a quick inhaler hit
remembers the children

a-sleddin’ the peppered snow
sheds their coal-thinned air
to embrace wind and sun

old folks hold burning coals
to throw, linger with burnt hands
mutters she the earthy prayer:

help us find a deep breath
when the coal-thinned air
splays thick as slurry

wreathes us in sulphury hands
we pray the air to clear
for clean water to flow

or dark veins to close below
for black velvet lungs repair
to breathe freely in our dole.

W. R. Stoddart is a writer from Southwestern Pennsylvania. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Valparaiso Poetry Review, The Paterson Literary Review, North Dakota Quarterly, The New York Quarterly, among others, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.