Beautiful, The Dead End
       

of your body
strong with the last shards
of summer, beautiful,

Ohio, your children
pushing each other
midwest of decency

toward failure, certain, their nerves
disciples of the end
of August, the season brutal

to the brink of its body,
the mud marked by heels
in sudden monuments

where they forced tameness
back into their eyes, reeling
themselves down

until, half-mass sober,
enough language returned
to think so long, lover

I'll long for as long as
Ohio rivers, beautiful,
letting me go

too far, through orchard
and field, through the best
of the body, beyond

the shards of vows
we leave in each other.
Beautiful, all that leaving.

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Copyright © 2013 Allison Davis All rights reserved
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The Kent State University Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission