Alise Alousi: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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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. 

Comments

[Grace Cavalieri]

The art matches the poem exactly. Turmoil and motion. But something good rises in both. Strong.

[Bill Nevins]

Lovely poem for Detroit, the city also beloved by my late dear friend poet Robert Warren AKA Whitey X. Thanks!

[Cindy Hochman]

I have a fondness for "poems of place" and this is a really wonderful one. I love the couplets (I have a fondness for couplets too) interspersed with one-liners. I like the tone of this poem and all the interesting, well-crafted details. I was in Detroit a few times when I was young and my brother was going to law school there. And I agree with Ms. Cavalieri that the artwork is perfect for this poem. I enjoyed reading this, Alise.

[Michael Whelan]

Gives me the feel of being taken inside a surreal eye that sees unsparingly keen into an ironically real manufactured into the essence of this city.

[lally]

unexpectedly compelling

[Abbie Mulvihill]

I love the confident sound and power of this poem.

[David Beaudouin]

Alise's use of repetition is almost incantatory, opening up new landscapes both hilarious and spooky. Loved it - thanks, Terence!

[Eileen Reich]

I love the poem and the artwork.

[Don Berger]

Everything in this high hymn is precise and unpredictable and thrilling. It just keeps climbing into the sky over the speaker's city. I love the "For" in "For in Detroit there is a secret highway," as if it's the highway that gives cause for everything else she points us to and describes. I could read pages and pages of this reminiscence. Thank you Alise for the great force of your vision and language, and Terence, thanks for wisely choosing this poem to show us.

[Terence Winch]

Don: thank you, my friend, for the comment.

[Terence Winch]

David: thanks for the comment.

[Phyllis Rosenzweig]

Pretty great love poem to a city. I've been to Detroit. I get it. Thanks.

[Patrick Clancy]

Delightfully harsh and spunky choice, Terry. Love the poem and the art. I know the city a bit, and a number of Detroiters. Five bucks says no signs are posted and it’s not the same 15 minutes every other day. Thanks, I needed this.

[Susan Campbell]

Excellent!

[Nin Andrews]

Love LOVE this poem. Having lived in Cleveland and Youngstown, I relate.

[Rob Billingsley]

It's been decades since I traveled to Detroit from Ann Arbor. I don't remember if Detroit is a Sin City or a Cynic City. This poem makes me wonder if it's both. R

[Dr. Earle Hitchner]

Except for a single sentence, “Once an entire family was killed in a stampede,” this poem of “Reminiscence” is written entirely in the present tense. That lends an immediacy of palpable impact throughout the poem. It peers back at the Detroit of 1998, just 31 years after what has been described as the worst civil unrest in U.S. history. The “Detroit riots” of July 23-27, 1967, left 43 people dead, 342 injured, and nearly 1,400 buildings burned. Summoned to this scene were 7,000 National Guard and U.S. Army troops to quell the upheaval. In her poem Alousi examines the lingering outside-of-Detroit impression of Detroit in 1998 through sundering language and imagery: “We eat with our eyes”; “The incinerator wears a surgical mask”; “Our factories sleep with one eye open.” These minatory scenes are limned matter-of-factly. Alousi inverts any expectation of a fond or cozy recollection implied by the titular words “A Reminiscence.” And yet the poem retains what might be called the civic pride of the author, whose last two sentences suggest reclamation and perhaps rescue if only through urban horticulture: “In Detroit we cover our houses with fine mesh and ivy. Wild roses grow everywhere.” (The “textual collage” and “serial essay” techniques discussed in THE NEW YORKER article on Eliot Weinberger apply here.) We tend to forget that Detroit was nicknamed “The Motor City” for a reason. Ford, General Motors, and other major U.S. car and truck manufacturers were based there, providing thousands of jobs not only for Detroit denizens but also for the great northern migration from the south. (Terence Winch’s apt pick of Diego Rivera’s painting reminds us of this erstwhile industrial vitality.) Alise Alousi’s “Detroit 1998, a Reminiscence” is something of a miracle: she challenges us by her vivid, counter-intuitive descriptions while luring us uncannily to the Detroit alive in her generative art and imagination. What a triumph!

[Terence Winch]

Thanks, Earle, for another nuanced & insightful reading of a poem.