The Charming Nancy

She is out there somewhere,
creaking in the swell
of the green lough water,
oozing sugar
and black-market nicotine
into the river’s vein.

She stirs herself into
my morning coffee;
she is in the smell of money
and clean cotton sheets.
At night she sweats
into my bones
a sugar-island melody,
her blanched dead rat-
a-tatting on my dreams.