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Detroit 1998, a Reminiscence
after Eliot Weinberger
In Detroit there is no fresh fruit.
We eat with our eyes. Our children are strong as weeds. They learn the alphabet backwards and
grow up never wanting to leave.
Our streets are named for cigarettes, highways—winning lotto numbers. In Detroit we don’t
stop at stop signs and traffic lights never turn red. We crave the smell of gasoline.
There exists only one map of the city. The mayor keeps it facing the wall in his home and you
must pay a fee to look at it.
The casino coughs blood into the night sky and the incinerator wears a surgical mask.
In Detroit our smiles are crooked, our canine teeth sharp as diamonds or hard candy sucked
to a fine point.
When it rains the streets smell like tortillas and wine and we play games where you must gather
with only those who look exactly like you.
In Detroit vines grow out the doors and windows of the oldest churches and you must cross the
street or travel with a machete to pass them.
There are seven kinds of birds that gather by railroad tracks at noon and dusk. All the gardeners
in the city take turns watching over them.
In Detroit our factories sleep with one eye open, their histories written in code on internal
walls.
All our cats are feral. They live on the roofs of our public buildings. Packs of dogs have been
sent to unseat them.
For in Detroit there is a secret freeway with only one car, its headlights dimmed, and the sound
of its bass makes roadside flowers grow.
The river is full of socks, hijabs, bicycle tires. Old men fish for hours off the sinking pier.
There is one library in the city and it is open every other day for fifteen minutes. Once an entire
family was killed in a stampede.
In Detroit we cover our houses with fine mesh and ivy. Wild roses grow everywhere.
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Alise Alousi is the author of the poetry collection, What to Count. She has worked for over two decades at InsideOut Literary Arts in Detroit and is a recipient of a 2019 Kresge Literary Arts Fellowship. [For Eliot Weinberger, see this link.]
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One of the Detroit Industry Murals (1932–1933), a series of frescoes by the Mexican artist Diego Rivera, consisting of twenty-seven panels depicting industry at the Ford Motor Company and in Detroit. Together they surround the interior Rivera Court in the Detroit Institute of Arts.
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Author: Terence Winch
