She drives to the lip of the Ohio.  The mud-eaten boat ramp
hides half a mile down in the birches' half-sloughed skin.  

She's lived with this town for three years, has clutched 
the northern bank of the river like a southside doublewide.  

America's family town, the billboards say.  They forget 
the meth lab that blows up once a year or the mass

of men who drink cases of Milwaukee's Best for supper—
like the one who took her out last summer.  Thirty, burnt-

out.  Couldn't figure out why she moved here for school. 
City of the blue class and broken-hearted, city of signs 

that promise a pack of Wildhorse cigarettes for $2.79, city 
of the shit-out-of-luck.  Another mosquito summer,

and the swing she pulled from the water one stoned night
still straddles the bank.  She listens to its hinges scrape together, 

scratches rust-red flecks from the frame, the chains holding
the seat like anchor chains.  Even here, in the isolation

of cricket psalms, she used to wish herself away.  Now a barge 
moans, a passing phantom in the glass factory's blush.  

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