Made in Detroit (5 page)

My flesh tears easily, bruises,

will rot and stink and finally end

sweet as compost, giving itself

to trees, to grass, to wildflowers

and bees and mice, to whatever

wants to grow from my spent life.

Bodies falling through the air

when all exits from the fire are closed

to them and flames lick their skin:

we have seen that.

In our time and theirs.

Labor was cheap then;

too often cheap now, sweat

shops, whether crammed into

Brooklyn lofts or shipped

overseas. Women are cheap and

children are cheaper. Doors

locked against their escape.

Growing up in center city

Detroit when the factories

hummed like huge hives

at night and the sky was pink

from steel mills on the river

I learned early how replaceable

we all were to those with

power to replace us.

I see your charred clothes

glued to flesh as you hurtle

toward pavement, my sisters,

hard worked women with

blistered hands, forced to labor

six days, whose rest came

only in histories that can never

rectify what greed ignited.

An embryo is precious;

a woman is a vessel.

A fertilized egg is a person;

a woman is indentured to it.

An embryo is sacred until birth.

After that, he/she is on their own.

Abortion is murder. Rape,

incest are means to an end:

that precious fertilized egg

housed in an expendable body.

Let us make babies and babies

and babies; children are something

else, probably future criminals,

probably welfare cheats whose

education hikes taxes. You

can freely dispose of them.

We were filled with the strong wine

of mutual struggle, one joined loud

and sonorous voice. We carried

each other along revolting, chanting,

cursing, crafting, making all new.

First Muriel, then Audre and Flo,

now Adrienne. I feel like a lone

pine remnant of virgin forest

when my peers have met the ax

and I weep ashes.

Yes, young voices are stirring now,

the wind is rising, the sea boils

again, yet I feel age sucking

the marrow from my bones,

the loneliness of memory.

Their voices murmur in my inner

ear but never will I hear them

speak new words and no matter

how I cherish what they gave us

I want more, I still want more.

Unemployed: soon invisible,

after a while, unemployable,

unwanted, with your future

eroding along with confidence,

sense of self, the family

cracking along old fault lines.

And what do
you
do?
Age.

Out of work: out of security,

out of value, out of the routine

that organizes the days, out

of health insurance, out of

the house when the mortgage

can’t be paid, out on the street,

out of society, out of luck.

Your job was shipped

overseas. Your job and two

others are being done now

by one frantic worker.

A robot replaced you.

Your company was bought

and demolished.

Somebody elected you

superfluous, a discard.

Somebody made money;

somebody bought a yacht

with your old salary. Some-

body has written you off,

Somebody is killing you.

At night when you can no

longer sleep, don’t blame your-

self. What could you have

done? Nothing. Choices were

made to fatten dividends,

bloat bonuses, pay for a new

trophy wife and private plane.

You did nothing wrong

except your birth. Wrong

parents. Wrong place. Wrong

race. Wrong sex. If only

you’d had the sense to be

born to the one percent

life would be truffles today.

What we have done to you

for our convenience. In cave

paintings you stand, huge, looming

over hunters with your sharp

deadly horns and prancing hooves.

You could reach seven feet tall

at your massive shoulders.

Called Aurochs, now just cows.

We have tamed the wildness out,

shrunk you to an amenable size.

You were bigger than bison,

fierce, worshipped for your strength

companions of the moon goddess.

In the Greek islands, dove cotes

sacred to her are marked with

your horns. Hathor the cow

goddess gave fertility and joy.

I meet your limpid gaze as you

chew your cud under a scrub oak

then rise lowing to be milked:

turned from monarch to food.

The crickets are loud at night

a chorus of teakettles demanding

sex. The tomato plants begin

to brown from the bottom up.

South of here a hurricane comes

ashore with murder in its hollow

heart, winds little can stand

against, a surge of tide roiling

over seawalls. The lords of oil

know they will survive however

the soil cracks with drought

and cattle and mustangs die

of thirst. No matter how tornadoes

level towns, strewing the precious

of lives across rubble. Hurricanes

move in posses across the weather

map. We who garden feel climate

change in our dirty hands, see

strange new bugs and stampeding

weeds, piles of eggplants and no

peas, fewer butterflies, more horse-

flies. We face the ocean that is way

too warm this time of year and wait

and worry, but we do not pray

to the lords of oil who control

the climate but to whatever god

we offer our hope like the fruits

Cain brought that were rejected.

What part of a person is tied up

in the sports team they watch

on TV? I remember the day after

the Patriots lost the Super Bowl

to the Giants, the streets of Wellfleet

were dim with the fog of depression.

Defeat wafted through houses, offices,

stores. It was yellow-grey and tasted

of salt and pollution. In Byzantium

supporters of green or blue chariot

racing teams killed each other

till the streets ran crimson.

We not only root for our teams

but see wars as giant hockey

games. Our team’s basketball

forward is dearer than a neighbor

or cousin or co-worker. He

is our darling, our avatar.

Somehow we seek to become him.

We wear his number. We

imagine he would love us

back. But we don’t exist.

We’re just noise in the stadium,

so many numbered ticket holders,

sad faces, autograph seekers

a maw into which that player’s

talent is leeched until glory

days are over and he retires

to fail at a restaurant and die

at fifty-eight of an enlarged heart.

Governments, TV newsmen count soldiers

dead, wounded—mostly the dead, never

the brain dead or the damaged in what

passes for life, the suicides, the trained

killers who can’t stop loading their anger.

But mostly that’s not who dies from

a drone attacking a suspicious crowd

that is really a market. Just caught

in crossfire. The wrong place [their

little house] wrong time [family meal].

A school is poisoned, a wedding

party is strafed, a hospital is blown

up. Babies are collateral damage.

A pregnant woman may be hiding

a bomb in her maternity clothes.

The dogs, the cats, the birds tame

and wild, the cattle, goats, lizards,

hares, foxes, all the creatures who

live in what has become a battlefield

and have no way to safety: they die.

Trees perish; whole forests, whole

ecosystems are bombed out of

existence. Creeks poisoned. Soil

honeycombed with mines. Farms

vanished. Ways of living destroyed.

After armies have gone back home

where taxes still pay for that war,

how many decades will pass until

the land is green and fertile again,

people do not scream in their sleep

if they dare to sleep, children play

in fields without losing a leg or head,

birds sing celebrating their nests,

neighbors forgive desperate choices

and a thing ripped is finally knit whole.

How often we navigate by what is no

longer there. Turn right where the post

office used to be. She lives in a condo

above where the bakery blew sweet

yeasty smells into the street. A nail

salon now.

Kelsey Hayes had a factory there

on Livernois where our neighbors

worked. A foundry spat out metal

where the strip club spits neon

now and loud skanky music

into the night.

Rows of little cheap houses replaced

by a few McMansions. Where did

all those people go? The workers

in factories, in tool and die shops,

the shoemakers and tailors, mom

and pop eateries?

You can be plunked down in Anywhere

U.S.A. and see the same row of stores

Target, Walmart, Gap, Toys-R-Us.

Exit the superhighway: McDonald’s,

Taco Bell, Burger King, Hardees,

you haven’t moved.

That’s where the school was: see,

it’s condos now. That’s the church

the parish closed to pay for priests’

sex. China got the shoe factory.

Urban renewal turned the old neighbor-

hood to dust.

Some things we make better and some

are destroyed by greed and bad

politics. We live in the wake

of decisions we didn’t share in,

survivors of a vast lethal typhoon

of power.

Cape Cod is wed to the mainland

by two bridges, on mild week

ends and all summer fed

by miles of backed up cars.

Right across Massachusetts

Bay, one of the worst nuclear

power plants, clone of Fukushima

leaks into the bay. On its roof

three thousand spent rods.

Vulnerable to hurricane, flooding,

attack from the air or land,

it squats menacing us.

We who live here all year, our

hundred thousands of summer

visitors, we have been deemed

expendable since we cannot

by any means be evacuated.

“Shelter in place” means breathe

in, absorb through your skin,

drink, swallow, eat radiation.

Your home will be uninhabitable

should you happen to survive

at least a while before cancer

dissolves your organs. The land

the pure water we cherish

will be tainted for decades. Fish,

birds, your dog and cats, raccoons,

squirrels, coywolves expendable

too. We count for nothing

compared to profits for a utility

housed in New Orleans where

you’d imagine they know floods.

We’re the throwaway people,

not important like corporations.

Chop off the crooked arm

of Cape Cod and let us bleed.

Is food the enemy?

Giving a dinner party has become

an ordeal. I lie awake the night

before figuring how to produce

a feast that is vegan, gluten free,

macrobiotic, avoiding all acidic

fruit and tomatoes, wine, all nuts,

low carb and still edible.

Are beetles okay for vegans?

Probably not. Forget chocolate

ants or fried grasshoppers.

Now my brains are cooked.

Finally seven o’clock arrives

and I produce the perfect meal.

At each plate for supper, a bowl

of cleanly washed pebbles. Enjoy!