Copia (6 page)

A
LL
T
HAT
B
LUE
F
IRE

I'm from Virginia. Gasburg, Virginia.

And I heard that the plants were hiring,

so what I did, I came up here

for a New Year's party.

And after I went to the New Year's party,

I didn't ever go back.

I went to the Ford Motor Company

because they were hiring. That was

the 3rd of January, 1969.

My first job was working in the engine plant,

where they build the motors at.

I just came up here to a New Year's party

and got this job and never go back.

They have the motors hanging on a line,

and they'd be passing through,

so one guy turns the crank,

one guy put a piston in,

then you turn the crank again,

and another guy put a piston in.

Yeah, they go on down the line

like that. Then when it get out

to another part of the line,

they lay the motor down,

they put the heads on,

spark plugs in.

And then it gone on out—

they turn the motor over,

put the oil pan on,

keep on down the line.

When the motor get to the back,

they be ready to start it up.

They hook up the hoses

and the gas line, start it up

right there, less than half an hour.

When I would go on break, sometimes

I would go back there, watch them guys

hook the hoses up and start em up,

cause I used to like to hear them started up.

All that blue fire be shooting out of there

when the motor first started, cause they

ain't got no pipes on it.

Sound real loud, that blue fire

from the exhaust system.

Once they put that carburetor on there,

they just pour the gas, hook the gas line up,

hit the accelerator a couple of times,

and there you go. Start right up.

They started it without the body.

The engine don't be in the body yet.

I just came up here to a New Year's party

and got this job and never go back.

Man they were having so much fun.

Back then, I didn't want to go back.

O
UTSIDE THE
A
BANDONED
P
ACKARD
P
LANT

closed fifty-four years, the crickets

are like summer, are like night

in a field, but it is daytime. It is August.

There is no pastoral in sight—only

Albert Kahn's stripped factory, acres

of busted and trembling brick façade

so vast there must be thousands

of crickets rubbing their wings

beneath makeshift thresholds of PVC

piping tangled in ghetto palm saplings

growing through a deflated mattress top

tossed over rusted industrial metal the shape

of an elephant dropped on its knees

dispensing invisible passengers into

moats of rubble dappled with what?

These crickets, their industrious wings

mimicking silence and song, lonely

background, until one beat-up maroon

Buick flies down Concord, accelerating

like the road just keeps going, like he'll

actually get away with whatever he's doing,

then two white cop cars, Doppler sirens

shrieking and braiding, but it is peaceful

other than that—you might think

you're in the country as in not the city

as in wilderness under the bridge that used to say

MOTOR CITY INDUSTRIAL PARK

and now just punched out eyes and ARK

A
ND
A
FTER THE
A
RK

what was left behind was astounding:

dead trees wearing upside-down shopping carts on their hands

conference call phones, black and ringless, resting on a park bench

a pile of singleton shoes crowned with a blue plastic dump truck

and the signs: Camel Cigarettes Pleasure to Burn $ Special Offer

Toasted Double Melts, 2 for $4, and Yahweh scrawled everywhere

W
HY WAS THE ARK AND FLOOD NECESSARY?

Because no one was able to catch a taxi out of Detroit.

They were only, it turns out, cardboard cutouts.

(take you in a taxi—God can taxi you to New York

W
HAT DOES THE ARK LOOK LIKE?

See: America's Greatest Manufacturing Experience

See: Perfect Industrial Complex

See: horsepower, engine block

See: symbol of the American spirit

W
HAT ANIMALS WERE TO BE LOADED ON BOARD?

I can't tell you that. I can only describe the creatures

(all stuffed) that were abandoned—plush lambs, a bunny,

a giant floppy dog, something that might have been

a mouse, possibly a pig, but mostly teddy bears

nailed to porch stairs or rotting siding, deflated

and torn by the wind, uncolored by the rain until

all the animals belong to the same (god)forsaken clan.

And You Shall Say God Did It

but really it was racism/poverty/economics/inequality/violence/

deindustrialization/cars/suburbia/mismanagement/corruption

and all the factories of the great city burst apart

and the floodgates of the sky broke open

and schools and jobs were blotted out

but day and night did not cease

and all the flesh that stirred in the city persisted

the buildings held their ground and used trees

to anchor themselves to the land

and O Yahweh, the sunflowers—have you seen

the tangle of sunflowers in the yard?

T
HE
L
ANGUAGE OF
H
APPINESS

is not present if there has been a change of partners

(there has been no change of partners)

is the house with a notice taped to the door

& abandoned glow-in-the-dark stars still adhered

to the foreclosed ceiling & the developer

says it will never sell—the basement has been

condemned, did you see the exposed rebar?

The language of happiness

is an inherently inwardly focused experience

is a private affair

is the new black

because my mother went

to the shrouded grave of the Rebbe

& Jesus loves my body like

an empty plastic egg that breaks

in half at the waist waiting to be filled

with small gifts (if we were lying

we'd clap our mouths) I'm just

not telling you everything

youbetterbelieve & blessyourheart

is always stressful,

this language of happiness

is wrecking our friendship

(you're pregnant)

is hectic: I drive the highway

& drive the highway & drive

the highway—you get the picture—

& wait for a woman to say my name

in the waiting room of the language

of happiness we are engaged in collusion

to solve a common problem that is often

quickly treatable, a condition of the [inexplicable]

that impairs conception

the language of happiness is not bracketed—

three unprotected years of nature & then some

for a common problem, a system, an inability

despite an act of love strongly associated

with a body, dear body, can you be

a speeding cab that stops to pick up

a passenger, even if you're off duty?

The driver is on his cell phone again.

We're on the West Side Highway, body,

& behind those lit windows people

are folding & folding & folding

themselves in half like paper.

O fortune teller. O future.

I
NSIDE THE
F
RAME

a man leans in the doorway of his not-home

waiting to be photographed from a passing car

by a man who is dreaming of trespassing

and resurrecting the last bricks

from every demolished school [dwelling] church

he ever entered or abandoned himself in/to

before he left Detroit/this city

Rivera painted an infant huddled

in the bulb of a plant, a mother

hoarding apples in her circled arms

a harvest, a plenty

Jewelry * Loans * Cash Fast—

a billboard with a diamond

ring for every finger

and on the walls, so many hands

working the line/turning the cranks

(holy rollers) grasping rocks

while we look on

it don't exist
, says the plywood

door (attended to, cracked open)

at Bill's Blue Star Disco Lounge,

burned down so the sky shines

through the not-roof on/to Michigan Avenue

the whole road gap-toothed, boarded up

and then Woodward, where the parking

attendant swears he'll stay
outside the frame

in the lot with the cars till the game lets out

O
UTSIDE THE
F
RAME

is a brand new $115 million dollar high school with the same name as the abandoned one outside the frame are two men biking at midnight down John R street with red lights blinking off their cycles like Morse code it's not too dangerous outside the frame are the lines around Michigan Avenue for Slows Bar B Q outside the frame are the larger contexts for these shots the what's next and what's next to the slots of abandoned tagged houses and houses that went so long ago that only field is left not even foundations those have grown over with prairie grass did you see the pheasants outside the frame is a functioning farm an urban garden where one horse neighs in the heat nuzzles the dirt outside the frame stands a blue sign with two yellow suns and Hope Takes Root outside the frame is the Obama gas station at the intersection of Plymouth and Wyoming with rebranded awnings & signs & pumps and outside the frame the owner says I have my dream and my dream came true outside the frame is the possibility to do whatever the hell you want no one cares what we do here outside the frame is the blues jam at the corner of Frederick and St. Aubin so bring your lawn chairs to the abandoned lot where they pass the hat for the mowing Porta-Potties electric generator to run the amps because outside the frame sometimes there's just nobody around to say you can't

B
ORDERAMA

Inside me is a playground, is a factory.

Inside me is a cipher of decay.

I am sometimes a vehicle for absorbing wealth.

I feel daily like I have to defend myself.

Inside me is inbred chaos.

Inside me is America's greatest manufacturing experience.

Inside me is an assembly line four miles long

where the workers who build products

are themselves interchangeable parts.

Inside me is a big blue Cadillac.

Inside me is a shrunken footprint.

Inside me are things that are not relevant

to anyone's idea of a civilization in ruins—

a moment of consolation, a transitory

slideshow, a centerfold.

Inside me is someone saying we will

rebuild this city. Inside me is the legacy

of tanks rolling down the Boulevard,

an arsenal of scrapped schools

with graffiti on the doors—

I'm Alone  

I have Lost

my  
children.

Skys Tha Limit.

Inside me I've got

a window

where my heart is

but we hope for better things.

If we don't act so bad, they won't close the school.

If you close the school, there's nothing here.

Inside me is the fate of a neighborhood.

And something hard that refuses to die.

Is that plywood torn off?

Can I fit through that hole?

Inside me they've left everything behind:

maps, test tubes, disintegrating plaster,

bent rebar, torn conveyor belts

where three guys worked the engine

and one guy turned the crank.

I was an autoworker for 33 years,

she said,
and you learn your job so well

that it looks like you're part of the line,

it looks like you're dancing
, like the guy alone

on John R Street outside his black sedan—

August night and his car doors open,

music pouring out, doing a graceful

running man. I want to tell him

about the lost colony, the people

that landed and vanished inside me.

And this photographer I talked to

on the phone who thinks Detroit

is still on her way down, hasn't hit

bottom. But there's Harmonica Shah

in his overalls in a lot on the corner

of Frederick and St. Aubin singing

if you don't like the blues, you got a hole

in your soul. If you don't like the blues,

go home.