Poem to the Detroit River

Detroit – where the weak are killed and eaten. – T-shirt slogan, circa 1990 . . . the 33 year old woman . . . leapt to her death . . . from a crowded bridge that . . . connects Detroit . . . with its famous island park, Belle Isle. She was trying to escape the 300-pound man whose car she had accidentally bumped into. According to police, the man had smashed her car windows with a tire iron, dragged her from the vehicle – stripping off most of her clothes in the process – slammed her against the hood of her car and pounded her with his fists. Deletha Word . . . could not swim . . . She jumped into the water 40 feet below. – James Ricci , Los Angeles Times [August 31, 1995] The road to the afterlife – There was . . . a river that had only one bridge across it . . . This bridge was guarded by a dog that jumped at souls and made many of them fall into the river and drown. – Bruce G. Trigger , The Huron: Farmers of the North Not really a river at all, but a handshake between two Great Lakes, Huron stretching to embrace Erie in its green-gray grasp. You stitch the liquid boundary of a city dismantling itself, bricks unmortared, spires sagging, burnt out structures razed to open field. Prairies returning here, foxtails and chicory, Queen Anne’s lace sways; tumbleweeds amble down Woodward Avenue, blow past fire hydrants, storefronts and rusted Cadillacs. You are the mirror into which we plunge. Towers of a stillborn renaissance bend to admire their vacant beauty; automobiles built in Mexico catch the chrome reflection of your waves. They speed across the bridge to the island whose willows spill their tears against your breast. Darkness closes our eyes; the park empties, bridge bears a chain of headlights. Perfume of exhaust drifts over your blackened currents; cars jostle for their place in line. Not the fist of one man but the sucker punch of a city taking scrappy pride in its bruised countenance. One bumper kisses another like gunshot; the town explodes. You swallow the blood of a woman’s shattered cheekbone, pressed to metal hood, scorched by engine’s heat.Who wanna buy some of dis bitch – she got to pay fo’ my car.