Burning Coal by Cameron Morse

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Burning Coal

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Early morning I toast between kitchen

counter and cast-iron stove. My eyes sink

into the chimney hole’s orange glow.

Pale flames wrapped like cellophane

around the black rock meteorite of coal.

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Heat lavished upon my thighs in chill

February rain, misting kittens, furry rain,

my mother-in-law calls it, kneeing

the washing machine onto the balcony

where it can drain. Between the stovetop’s

cavern and the counter’s aluminum trim,

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I slump the way he did when he harkened

to an earthen jar in morning murk

after his second or third hospitalization.

His wife hid plastic jugs amid crates

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and mops out the balcony window.

I must admit I snuck a sip now and again,

wanting to know what it felt like

to be him, the man who was my father-in-law.

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Even now I have no idea.

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Cameron Morse has been published in numerous magazines, including New Letters, South Dakota Review, TYPO, and Bridge Eight.  His first collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award. His second, Father Me Again, is available from Spartan Press. Coming Home with Cancer is coming out this summer in Blue Lyra Press’s Delphi Poetry Series.

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