What a filthy river! Lined with steel mills
and factories, to swim in it was to smell
for days the oily stink against your skin,
a nausea-twist in your stomach,
uneasy reminder of the river’s phlegmy,
dark-green clutch. It was as dangerous
as it was dirty. The bottom dug out
for gravel, unnaturally and unevenly deep,
held invisible currents, eddies, undertows
that could pull, suck and hold you down
until you drowned or throw you up again
to limb-flash, flail and suck for air.
Each summer it claimed a child
from the cancerous towns along its sides,
as if it were a angry, wounded god
demanding tribute. Each summer
we gathered there to fish for monstrous carp
and catfish no one would ever eat, to swim
and dunk each other beneath the blinding water,
to watch the rich kids carve into the current
white-tipped waves, bronzed bodies balanced
on single skis behind small, sleek powerboats.
By the docks we bobbed in water warm as blood,
the sunlight marching like fire across the oily surface
to burn away all but summer’s touch.
We swam beside the hulk of coal barges
black as the bible’s curse that tore the earth.
All summer we swam in it. What a filthy river!

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