Yesterday was pretty awesome.
The long awaited anthology The Detroit Neighborhood Guidebook launched. Tons of Detroiters. A few transplants, but hey…
Big thanks to Aaron K. Foley, for the opportunity and for the platform to showcase Detroit’s many voices.
If you missed the reading, here’s a peek of my piece. If you want to see the other ones, you’ve gotta get your own.
Good thing for you, books are on shelves now!
What Wikipedia Won’t Tell You About Delray, Michigan 48209
You can smell Delray
from three different cities.
In the summer, Delray smells like the shit that burns
and under the I-75, it rains exhaust all year.
The skies are streaked yellow during the day, and
someplace between steel and sewerage
the smell of pancakes, fish and grits
wakes a household.
In the miasma of waste and Zug
a grandfather calls his granddaughter Shank
and teaches her to sow New Year’s collards
in the front yard.
Someplace, between Yale and West End streets,
that grandfather’s daughter remembered him
in beds of mustards, and tomatoes. She teaches
her daughter that onions are lilies.
Someplace between funk and rot, folks
are tired of not being able to breathe in the day
tired of not being able to sleep at night.
My father lives there, still.
Some nights, if you listen closely
you can hear the neighborhood hum
something between stench and haze
between song and secret.