Western Pennsylvania

You wanted a typewriter
but instead they gave you
a litany of steel mills
reclining in Allegheny valleys.
It was every day after Sunday
and the truck would not start.
The lights went out
one by one
in the vinyl clothed house.
This was your health
failing like a marriage.
A fist around a silver ring,
you possessed it
and then you lost it in the dark bathroom.
The T.V. was on but silent
and you were afraid
slouching slightly west from the pull of work
under the glow of the state of the union.
It was the eighties,
and Reagan was president,
and you were one beer away
from rusting to death.