Detroit Public Library, Burton Historical Collection
Major flooding occurred in the lower levels of the Detroit Public Library–Main Library, during the torrential rain storm on June 25, 2021. Every room and area of the lower levels were impacted by the relentless downpour. —Detroit Free Press
The sky broke that summer salt-swept the city, collapsed the freeways' movement. Some say they were cursed anyway, those man-made roads that crashed straight through the parts of town built by Black migrants. This is not a poem about the freeways, or the way the city emptied when we arrived, but if those roads filled like a pitcher, we should have known what would become of the basements, even Burton, monument that it is. Was. Photocopied maps. Obituaries. Property deeds. Records of whole families floating in a pool of their own waste.
Black Out, August 2003, Detroit
It was one of the biggest power outages that the US ever saw. At first, people were worried it was an act of terrorism, but when the blackout was confirmed as merely a power outage, the mood shifted. —Michigan Radio Newsroom
The grills turn up. Somebody speakers
serenade all our porches, and we jam,
smoke-soaked and lawless, all open
hormones and this powerless field.
What is it about the end of the world,
makes you think you are owed
an explanation? From God. From
your mama. From the boy who ghosted
months ago, when the air became
more steam than breeze, his number
still memorized and half-dialed each evening.
You would chase him down, make him answer
to you while the streetlights are silent,
but this block, this city, don’t know
how to tell us apart in the daylight—
done swallowed whole bodies before
this night, ripe for disappearing.
First, the “man” of the house next door
swept clean off his mama’s porch.
Maria, a dandelion blown away
from the passenger seat of her new man's
custom Cutlass. My city give a fuck
about the proper order of things. She love
a malfunction. All them downed
wires. Mirrors broken in the street.
Our minivan, sat on stolen bricks
by thieves kind enough to leave the metal
skeleton stripped in the driveway. This block
hormone swoll, smelling herself. There is
no law. Sometimes, in May, it snows.
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