I.
The city’s blocks fold down to the water. People here are godless but hopeful. We hold our hands aloft, outstretched, extended. We suffer through smog. We distill liquor.
Any denomination of belief will do.
We pray to our buildings, our rooms, our belongings.
Across the water, spires once rose up at every corner. We strained at the leash to see what was made possible.
Of course the gods came to watch them.
Their city was purpose-built for decisions.
Our votes compiled. Dreams collided as cars. We waited at traffic lights. They idled at exit ramps.
Now we still wait in line and cross the bridge. But we blink with the sunshine glancing through empty-eyed buildings.
The gods once perched on tapering setbacks. They lounged against Art Deco. They watched the city dream itself up from underground, from its sewers and basement mysteries, up toward the sky, ever over-reaching.
Now in Cliff Bell’s reopened speakeasy bar, a fat man is laughing sadly.
Handprints peel from the walls. Flapping eviction papers blow down the street.
There is fractured grey pavement. Green terra-cotta tiles fall from windowsills.
Easy to remember which side of the water we’re on, again.
II.
Even when no one likes you, America, still you puzzle and fascinate. You disappoint so brightly.
You see us all as fuel. Our Northern Lights glimmer pretty white edges.
But we are each and utterly similar, reflecting.
We are chess-playing brothers who never speak to one another.
We are combatative girl back-up-singers in matching yellow go-go boots of patent leather.
We hold impossibly-long tortoiseshell cigarette holders.
The fat man dressed as the Devil leans forward to offer us a light.
We click into perfect focus, blowing smoke, standing at the edge of the water.
III.
Far above the smash-windowed waiting room, the rooftop of Michigan Central Station is netted with gods, admiring the blue Ambassador Bridge.
Some days we’re moving forwards. Some days we’re not. That kind of metaphor keeps its pedal to the metal.
I’ve never had much mercy, nor enough patience.
On our side of the water, a new condo tower is gleaming like teeth.
This is about going forwards because no one goes backwards properly, not even in books.
The dog in the backseat is drooling.
It’s Monday. Better to be on the bridge with the dog and a troubador’s song than stuck on the far side of the water.
The blue Ambassador stretches across very high. I’ve pickles and a tune that’s possible.
IV.
An hour from now, I’ll squitter the brakes sharply left. A little girl will cry, running to the cracked sidewalk into the arms of her screaming mother.
What narrows north then doesn’t.
The way I’ll hold each moment: the truck driver, the one with the scraggy beard, who just missed a really terrible day; the girl who will forget her error immediately; and the woman screaming in Spanish in the way of defensive magic. To write and rewrite, to stay inside the periphery.
How we will all go forwards into a slightly-less-terrible future. Across the bridge, hands ticking.
At night, from the other side of the water, we’ll see that narrow tower, its lone remaining light. Thirty-six storeys up, all fire-escaped, wedding-caked, empty.
Because the gods became tired, but they could not fly away.
