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46 The Opposite of Falling Stars, 1978 My family lives beside the trestle. We sleep inside the smell of creosote and beneath the sound of trains rattling: coal carried to the tipple across the black Kanawha. I dream wrecks in green valleys; my sisters dream boys hopping trains; our mother sleeps in her narrow bed. The coal falls from its gondolas and the quivering, bear-brown timber. Days in the alley, I collect the black chunks and recite graphite, anthracite, bituminous, lignite. ...

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