Miner’s Haiku

Coal dust floats through the
cold thick air. Miners strike hard
rocks. Black lungs wheezing.

Charlie R. Braxton is a poet, playwright and journalist born in McComb, Mississippi. He has published two volumes of poetry, Cinders Rekindled (2013), and Ascension from the Ashes (1991). His poetry has appeared in a number of literary journals, including, The Black Nation, Black American Literature Forum, Cutbanks, Drumvoices Review, Eyeball Literary Magazine, Shout Out UK, The San Fernando Poetry Journal and The Transnational. His work has also appeared in the anthologies The African World in Dialogue: An Appeal to Action! (2016), Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature & Art (2002), Step into a World: A Global Anthology of the New Black Literature (2000), Trouble the Water: 250 Years of African American Poetry (1996), and In the Tradition: An Anthology of Young Black Writers Read other articles by Charlie R..