 |
| The Ford Rotunda burning down, 1962. |
It was decided
by women who had lost their sons
that there should be no more Sundays
in Detroit.
It was decided
by girls with broken dishes for bones
that all sewing should be done with dope needles
and veinous thread.
It was traditional
for the underground tunnel to Canada
to be filled with shredded tires and bent hubcaps
from fatalities.
In Detroit, the mediums
predict things that have already happened,
going into trance states instantly upon hearing
old Motown.
It was decided
that love letters be made mandatory
for bums and debutantes whose heads rot softly
like pumpkins.
It was considered good form
for fat golfers to dole out mulligan freeways
through Black Bottom but never the fresh greensward
of Oakland county.
It was decided
in the end, that all elms be destroyed by fungi
and burned every Christmas at Ford Rotunda, disappearing
in tandem, brightly.
_________
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| The Detroit riots 1967 |
For Word Garden Word List--The Prodigy
Music: The Shangri-La's Leader of the Pack
Process notes: I grew up in well-off Oakland county, just a bop down Woodward Avenue from Detroit. I still remember being taken to the Ford Rotunda at Christmas when I was a small child. There were live reindeer, and my brother always got a toy version of a concept car. It burned down in 1962. I was seven years old.
In 1967, the city exploded in a riot after the police raided an after-hours "blind pig" nightclub. After decades of being hassled by Detroit police, the people there had finally had enough and fought back. I stood on the corner of Woodward Avenue up in my safe white suburb and watched the smoke rise over Detroit. I'll never forget it, and things would never be the same again.
I always feel as if I have learnt something when I read your work - you offer such insight and poetic mastery to the most interesting topics - Jae
ReplyDeletethat's the trick, isn't it? falling in love with the scars. and then poems pop out ~
ReplyDeleteWow. The poem is amazing and the process notes so interesting. I can see that small girl, watching the smoke rising. Incredible work, Shay.
ReplyDeleteSad and cynical, but true, that opening stanza filled with the pathos of lost hopes, a lost future that overrides the poem, while Oakland county watches.
ReplyDeleteFirst, thanks for showing how many gorgeous roads are possible from a set of words ... So many ghosts in those fat cities, I grew up in the first suburb north of Chicago, my father worked getting corporations involved in the inner city, all of the brutal divisions and realities you flesh out I recall there so sadly. i was downtown watching "The Jungle Book" at age 10 when Martin Luther King was shot, my dad hauled me out and drove us home, having me hide under the dash because there were snipers on the overpasses. Smoke from the West Side draped ash particulate over our nice neighborhood for days ... How haunting now the images of all those ghostly abandoned houses and factories in Detroit as "it was decided" that money move elsewhere. I get that feeling driving by the massively empty newspaper plant in Orlando, though the crime here is much more essential, and guilty and nailed with your poem. Ahem and amen.
ReplyDeleteThis poem is outstanding to me in two ways--first the language, which bristles with pain and authenticity, and second the way the language completely serves the concept, painting eloquently and sparingly the indelible picture of destruction in greys, blacks and whites as the poet tells the deeper tale with scarlet threads of lifeblood oozing from a dying civilization; not just one city, but all of us have been burned in the collapse of the old order. Just a remarkable poem, Shay. I am gobsmacked by the totality, but particularly struck by the second and fifth stanzas.
ReplyDeleteYour memory of that day surely created a poem that makes one feel the deep sadness and craziness of it all. Your notes at the end were beautiful all on their own but all together this is deeply moving and thought provoking in all the right ways my friend! I know you hate this kind of description but this is truly magnificent writing Shay!!
ReplyDeleteThat first stanza just hit me right there in the chest. The whole poem bleeds and burns with the stuff of life we carry with us forever, and how can we not, as they burn so brightly and change us as we experience them. Nostalgia, scars, and all the fabric of memory woven tightly, Shay.
ReplyDeleteI greatly enjoyed all of the details, how you worked the words into this fascinating poem. Such creativity. I have never been to Detroit, though I live in an adjoining state. What a strong memory you have of that riot of 1967, though you were very young. Some things just stay with a person through life....and sometimes become the stuff of poetry.
ReplyDeleteWow, wow, wow! This is amazing! Damn, I love that second stanza with the girls sewing with dope needles and veinous thread👌🏼 But my favourite stanza of all:
ReplyDelete"In Detroit, the mediums
predict things that have already happened,
going into trance states instantly upon hearing
old Motown." !!!!!
One of the best poems I've read in such a long time 🌸
This is powerful, painful, and ugly with reality. There's agony in death and when you watch a city die it is excruciating. God, what an impact it must have and still has on you.
ReplyDelete