My Favorite Warlord by Eugene Gloria

Author:Eugene Gloria [Gloria, Eugene]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101584897
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2012-05-28T16:00:00+00:00

DETROIT

My wife carries this city

like a pebble in the heel of her sock.

My mother-in-law with her dour smile

hands me a bean cake from the front seat.

We are driving through Belle Isle.

We come here for holidays and family.

In the hub of the wheel that is the city

hangs a boxer’s hand: Joe Louis’s giant fist.

Nobody seems to like this thing.

Why, I can’t say for sure.

Does it honor a man who behaved well?

Observed all the cardinal rules of Jim Crow?

Malcolm X met Cassius Clay here in 1962

at a luncheonette where the boxer

extended his arm to shake the minister’s hand.

Maybe you saw the photo of them in Harlem

in bold and vivid black and white.

Joe Louis, aka the Sepia Slugger,

the Tan Tornado, didn’t pay no mind

to young Cassius Clay, even later

after Ali whupped Sonny Liston.

Nobody likes a misbehaving black man

even when he’s right. In 1967,

Ali said, “Man, I ain’t got no

quarrel with them Vietcong.”

Suspended from the ring, Ali

would come around again. In Belle Isle

trees testify to urban blight, and I am

trying to locate the history of my fear.

The chairs of our dining set are made

from fruitwood trees, chairs

handcrafted in Italy, bequeathed

to us by my mother-in-law

who bought the set from Hudson’s.

Tree branches, foliage, roots, and vines—

everything is spreading across America.

Let me honor this woman who hands me

a bean cake and the woman she was

in 1967 giving birth to my wife.

Let me bless this car containing

our picnic through Belle Isle, across

the Detroit River and the long drive

back to where the past is heaped

and folded like an animal asleep

on the soft shoulder of the road.

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