Company Town

Girls give in under bridges

where only headlights

slipping over guardrails

break up the dark enough to see

the river sloughing past—

baptism of frayed tire, broken glass—

where fish swim blindly,

their pale bellies tracing

the surface of water divided

and joined in the dark and above,

only the flashing lights

of smokestacks: pressure building

slowly through pipes that fold

chemicals from tank to tank

as the plant burns in the hills,

roll of fire in the river, though

it is still a light against the foreheads

of collapsing teenagers: what

their fathers, their mothers, have given:

work that would dismantle the earth

to save them, that one day

they may rest their eyes elsewhere.