A rain of dust settled over the blackened beams that lay in piles on the muddy flooring. When they looked up a feathery rain made them close their eyes and rub their noses. The collapse had deafened them, so they didn’t hear each other—didn’t hear Tyler say, “Houston, we have a problem.” Or Edna’s cry, “Where are you, Tyler?” Or Diana’s scream. They reached out, squeezed an arm, a shoulder, found each other and crept deeper into the mine shaft.
Jane Olmsted is director of the Women's Studies Program and associate professor of English at Western Kentucky University. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Nimrod, The Louisville Review, Slow Trains, and are forthcoming in Hot Metal Press. Short stories have appeared in Kalliope, Beloit Fiction Journal, The Louisville Review, r.kv.r.y., and A Kentucky Christmas. "Movie Lines" is part of a manuscript collection of stories, Letters from the Karst.