so Detroit.” Or should we keep The Woodward as is, fists and all, as defiance against the white gaze?
It’s complicated, just like Detroit is complicated. So I guess this is what we’ll have to do in the meantime, which is what I’ve always done. When you go, don’t leave your mind vulnerable to bad decisions by drinking too much. Keep an eye for the exits, and know when to make an exit. Stay behind the brick wall that backs the old hardware store next door if you hear gunshots. But, I guess, always have fun. I never mean to put The Woodward down. I’ve had way more good times there than bad, and I’d wager we can all say the same. That’s just what happens there.
To Love the Horseman of War
Cleveland, OH
DOMINICK DUDA
I was forged in the likeness of steel & violence,
a bona fide swordsman impaling the soft pink
of any man I could wrap my hands around.
No origin is bloodless, the body unfurling
from the epicenter of its own roar & want
in a stampede of wounds. I’ve swallowed whole cities,
pressed lip to skin & made scab, thrift store
thaumaturgy. Does that arouse you? I’m their babe,
their bitch, glitterbird uncaged. The sun sets
when I tell it to set. Sure, they always want romance,
eventually, but I can’t tarry. The gunpowder’s
all rubbed off & I’m too wet to spark. Where’s the towel?
I’ve got to go. There’s a thousand faces in this city,
there’s two thousand eyes waiting to eat me alive.
crusty midwest demi femme, mapped
Mequon, WI and Chicago, IL
KEMI ALABI
my father’s open palm, drum taut, all war song.
crown of lye, barrette & braid.
two chords plucked out my mother’s throat,
wrapped in foil, hurled off a lake bluff.
sink full of the boys’ dishes
& my wet, shriveled hands.
all this, sea:
bruise blue, ghost thick.
& there:
somewhere between chicago & home,
my third skin scorched onto a highway,
pipe tucked in my boot,
gina’s breath singed to my neck.
the sin of her,
my first good meal.
the entire tongue.
every finger & lash, sweet lightning.
whole body, gospel.
whole mouth, cauldron.
whole heart, witch witch witch.
& there,
land:
a bed I built myself,
fresh country.
& there,
sky:
endless choir
of cocoa &
rose &
my name.
Lancaster is Burning
Lancaster, OH
STACY JANE GROVER
I see a city marked by flame. On East Main Street, General Sherman’s childhood home stands as a museum. Every day pick up trucks with confederate flags in the back windows blast by in mushroom clouds of diesel smoke. The city takes pride in being the birthplace of the man who cut across the South leaving only ashes in his wake. The story of the great field burner and the many legacies fire left on this city have been seared into us since childhood. Ebenezer Zane blazed a trail from Pennsylvania to Kentucky, founding the city. The first Anchor Hocking glass factory burned to the ground and resumed production only six months later, naming their most famous product line Fire King. The Fairfield County Fair—the longest continually running fair in Ohio—was famous for such events as “Racing by Gas Light” and the “Lake of Fire.” I carry these histories with me as I wander through town. I see them everywhere.
Down the street, the Grandstand in the fairgrounds smolders. The grandstand, built in 1909 and featured in the finale of the 1947 film “Green Fields of Wyoming,” was destroyed by arson in one night. As I stare at the rubble, I remember the words of George Ward Nichols, Sherman’s aide de camps, as he saw Atlanta burning: “A grand and awful spectacle is presented to the beholder in this beautiful city, now in flames.”
Across town, smoke looms large and black above Anchor Hocking’s clamshell as the factory burns again. Firefighters on extended ladders pour water from hoses to quench the billowing flames. Seeing them, I am reminded again of Sherman and his response to President Lincoln’s call to send more troops to fight the confederacy; “Why, you might as well attempt to put out the flames of a burning house with a squirt-gun.”
On King Street lay the remnants of a house exploded by a basement meth lab. The spires of brick towering over the blackened hills of rubble carry fragrant memory upward from the stones below.
On the occasion of this fortuitous homecoming, of seeing my birthplace in flames, I ponder the nature of self, of place. I haven’t inhabited—occupied, lived, been present or taken up space in—this town for years. And while the town never fled the corridors of my bodily memory, I fled it. The landscape of Fairfield County, Ohio sprouted the seeds of my imagination, helped them take root. I created my own worlds in which myriad lives were lived among the very real rich and varied Appalachian characters with whom I shared my life. My father levitated at church. My mother foresaw her grandmother’s house burning down. My grandmother braved a barn fire to save a horse. The women of my family were sensitive, always seeming to know more than what was visible, impossibly wise to me as a young child. I dreamed of inheriting their strength and wisdom, and in many ways, I did. I wore and played how I chose, hidden by the trees and valleys that surrounded me, unencumbered by the terrible burden of gender. Without any references to compare myself to, without
