Gravestones in Buffalo Creek, West Virginia Marked February 26, 1972

Andréa Fekete

 

go unvisited mostly. Us kids knew about the Flood, the one the coal company made. They told the papers it was an Act of God.

That freezing dark February morning black water-wall rumbledthrough the valley, people still sleeping, snoring, waking to the crash of trees snapping.

What was the final sound?

We played in graveyards as kids. As teenagers we smoke cigarettes, leaning against trees in the middle of the silence unafraid of ghosts. 

BELOVED HUSBAND February 26

BELOVED MOTHER  February 26

DAUGHTER February 26

SON and the little ones ASLEEP WITH THE ANGELS. 

February 26 February 26 February 26 

Lambs stone lambs sleeping on the small ones. 

We couldn’t imagine their prayers, didn’t know their faces, nicknames or voices but we knew  it was a sin to walk on them swells of dirt.

First appeared Chiron Review (2016)

 

Andrea Fekete is author of Waters Run Wild (2018) a historical fiction literary novel of the West Virginia coal mine wars. She is a coal miner’s daughter from Buffalo Creek, WV, granddaughter to Mexican and Hungarian immigrant coal miners. She co-curated Feminine Rising: Voices of Power and Invisibility (Cynren Press) Foreword Review’s Silver Winner for Indie Book of the Year in women’s studies. Her work appears in journals and anthologies such as Chiron Review, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Adirondack Review, ABZ, and books such as Eyes Glowing at the Edge of the Woods: Poetry and Fiction from West Virginia and many others. (WVU Press) She earned her MA in English from Marshall University and MFA in Creative Writing fiction from WV Wesleyan College. She now resides in Cleveland, Ohio. A segment of her memoir about her medical journey won 2024 Blue Earth Review summer dog daze prize in CNF.