A White Lampshade

Its crinkled plastic cover,
fussy and timid
as a rain bonnet, a shower cap,
made me laugh, humiliated again
by my family’s bad taste,
because I did not understand then
that to be born a woman in a mining town
was to inherit the unending war
against coal dust that men dug up all day
and wore home at night, like a farmer’s tan.

In spite of bathhouses at the breaker,
in spite of the bowl and pitcher on the front porch,
in spite of the claw-footed tub in the kitchen,
with the permanent black smudge
painted along its bottom by the water leaking out,
coal dust imbedded itself into every
chip and crack of their daily lives.