The Sundance Wives Unearthing: Cordero Rojo

Powder River
Basin, Cordero Rojo
mine where hooves transform
coal into polygamy's energy, the fire
produced blazes through The Sundance
Wives veins warming creations where gold
founded us, Rio Tinto group consolidation,

a mineral blacker
than Night of the Foal
pulled out of earth by dragline
excavators, Wyoming unearths
The Sundance Wives,

the mineral
readily combustible,
anthracite metaphorically
altered bituminous, graphite
sketched from our pencils that
draw those to us about your bigotry
and deception, by now it is illustrated
into the big picture,

Theophrastus said
among the materials
that are dug because
they are useful, those known
of coals are made of earth, and
once set on fire, they burn; they are
used by those of us who work in metals,

the composition
of funeral pyres in
the Bronze Age,

crucible test
free swelling index,
1500 degrees, all volatiles
are driven off, a small coke
button remains, we get it off,

conflagration,
coal cinders, fly ash,
horses broom tails Quaker
swish The Sundance Wives
unearthing.

Copyright Ms. Sage Sweetwater, firebrand lesbian novelist