FLINT.

dEAR,

At the poetry festival no one spoke to me

carrying the ghost of Flint around, wanting someone to hug it.

So I sat on the ground in my good pants till it was dark and thought

up love poems when there was no lover; thought of those

that thrashed at me and chewed my gulp down till

I bled over and over the new entry in the old

journal. And it takes some nerve writing about you.

Fiction always takes more courage to construct. it's the

meter of the protagonist, like horse hooves,

the way applause cages truth, the same gestures

of proof requisite in porn actresses who utter

into lonely ears on webcams...."I know you need me,

so tell me that you do". As children we loved to ride

in my uncles Buick, the ones cranked out by the strong men

who worked in the giant General Motors plant

poisoning the river. But who really cared? In America

you can easily build a fire and call it light or

warmth or destruction depending on where the

heat is greatest/ as we rode down Franklin Street

the windows cranked down and the strong air

blowing my sisters hair to straw patches, I remember

the vast tract of homes and shops, boots in winter with silver

buckles, mittens you made a chilly fist in in winter,

ear muffs that slid around your head like some furry,

extinct bird. And today my cousin has a gay son

who flames away and keeps late company

in the cracked driveway of a house with an

underwater mortgage. What I mean is that democracy

ushers you through poverty, the escapist euphemism of it,

where you name it devotion,  butter sandwiches or sugar toast

all carried in your Superman lunch pails to good

but segregated schools. And it filled you up with

knowledge and sustenance because, as Dad would remind us,

"somefolkskidsdon'thaveshittoeatatall" which was enough

warning to just be satisfied. So I grew up to watch the

"Exorcist" alone and read of how Whitman would search

for his brother for two whole weeks after the battle of

Fredericksburg, only to find him with a chipped tooth

and a slit on his cheek from a musket shell, which was

enough to throw him headfirst against suffering....ALL

SUFFERING. Because

hell is anywhere that love is mishandled.

So my turn came to read the poem I wrote about you

and someone gave me a live microphone and I read soft

the hard parts and hard the soft parts and no one could

tell from the way my hair had grayed that it was

the brown water all along

that every protest poem

written till eternity,

should be about.

Reviews

[jacob erin-cilberto]

"hell is anywhere that love is mishandled"

that says it all....wonderful line from a terrific piece of writing...."grew up to watch the "Exorcist" alone"

interesting what we think of as the ways we grow up...and what means adulthood.

i like the reference to whitman--and how we have to think up love poems when they are happy...but they just happen so naturally when we are writing about pain....seems that way with all writing.

and i have missed yours, dana.

j.

[h d e rushin]

thank you my dear brother......Sometimes poems become personal........I've missed you
terribly my friend....dana

[eli mercuree rue]

dammmmmn this was really beautifully written!!!

[h d e rushin]

thank you Eli Mercury (how I love your name)......dana

[Queen Ceeza]

I LOVE THIS, I MEAN WOW! TRULY INSPIRING !!!

[h d e rushin]

thank you Queen Ceeza....for those kind remarks....dana

[Corset]

ah Jacob beat me to that line! I so already had it highlighted to copy and paste to point out the incredible truth of it, hell IS anywhere that love is mishandled, I also really got a kick out of the line about the ear muffs and how you described mittens that never kept your hands warm , how the ice and snow would stick & ball on the end of wool soak it thru till your fingers were red with numbness, strong and wonderful write, but the brown water all along in our youth that one we become matures and grays, changes us from dangerous and word worthy to just old and unexciting could never ever be said about you sweetness...your poetry is timeless and will endure just as long as any protest might.

[h d e rushin]

thank you my love....meandyouforever......dana

[Corset]

lolol, that's right Dana, promises are promises, and I did promise to read your poetry foreverand ever, and we will both remain gossip worthy long into our gray hairs :)

[The Twin Arenas]

"dear" at the top is the spigot. revelatory, as usual. unfortunately, with how flint lives, THIS might be the only way to clean the water.

[h d e rushin]

thank you dear brother for stopping by and for those kind words...dana

[Cory Barrett]

I have to agree with Jacob on this one "hell is anywhere that love is mishandled", it almost takes the iron out of the water for a moment.

i love this one Dana, its a michigan poem. I'm finding that michigan is a place all its own. ya know i w as born in ohio. and spent half of my adult life in cleveland. I find that norther ohio and southern michigan are really the same place. we could call it the raped lands. fucked into oblivion by the big boys and left for dead. it's not a sexy place. all of the wealth it lead to lives in new york and up the east coast. but, they can know that. they have nice pipes.

[h d e rushin]

so true Cory...there is nothing sexy about Michigan or Ohio.. And Flint doesn't ring off the tongue like Vegas or Reno lol...It is the raped lands.....lands that big industry exploited, fracked, mined and misused then took all of their jobs to Mexico..Thank you dear brother for stopping by to visit me again.....dana

[M. Shepherd]

I love that your poems are sentient creatures with memories and agency. You are a true deity by the life you breathe into them.
Your raw, uncontrived and fluid style is easily digestible yet remains highly nutritious. Thoughtful, philosophical, poignant, important.

[h d e rushin]

thank you Marcie found stopping by to visit me again .....I've missed you so much...dana

[M. Shepherd]

:) my pleasure, I've missed you too!

[W.k.kortas]

I hearken back to "Roger & Me", where there were even people in Flint who were blissfully unaware about its rot (Bob Eubanks, for chrissake--Bob Eubanks!) There is much of the protest song here, something I can understand, having lived in any number of mill towns where the company patted on you the head and told you everything would be just fine, until that day where there was a brief press conference and then the doors were padlocked and you were out on your a*s and on your own. What you've done so well here, what raises this above the standard message piece which blunt-objects us to boredom, is to put a face on, tie a life to those in Flint and Rochester and all the other cities and people who ended up as the hole in the GM donut, to be thrust into despair and poisoned water and who really gives a damn, because it's Flint? This piece boils along rapidly, at the pace of anger and heartbreak, because it so ably tells the story of both.

[h d e rushin]

three weeks away in the south where the air smelled of hay and horses and crickets spoke
to the ageless moon, onto to return to your heart as pure and rich as ever..thank you my friend
for my rant/ but this whole Flint poison water thing is personal.....dana