John Jeffire

Hubcap Woman

You a killer chrome spoke spinner
on a pimp-loaded rose Cadillac El Dorado
rolling over Woodward Avenue
on a fuel-injected  June afternoon
poetic goddess witch on wheels
Ambassador Bridge kick in the sky
and I want to jump inside you, woman,
and ride, ride, ride.

I-75 overdrive, white-wall shuck and jive
Warren Avenue to the Florida border
People mover groove through moonroof
And the smell of your leather seats
Ain't doin' nothin' to beat this heat
Butter soft and round where it need be
One whiff baby and I start to breathe

Gimme a sip a your Cass Corridor
Motown it slow over to Paradise Valley
Curve the swerve a your Hitsville
Iggy Pop the Four Tops a your Corktown
Sleek me a Greektown dollar slot
Hit me, baby, with a Tommy Hearns shot
Joe Louis' American fist flexed at Windsor
The strait, the linker of lakes and Canada
Hiding in Henry Ford's sulpher shadow

'67 Tac Squads and Big 4 messin'
12^th and Clairmount altar of insurrection
Old Greensleeves knew the beer he brewed
And Tonia Blanding's blood proved
A thin skin of guilt we all lived in
Burn the world down to Renaissance again
We burn this city every day, every day, every day
In a hundred thousand different ways
And we stay and line blind and kind
In skin tones and gramophones and chainlink locks
And Jimmy Hoffa never coming home from the Red Fox
And we deal with it, we deal, and we deal
And we steal and we know pain and grief are real
Because we feel, because we feel, we feel

This the city that put whooping on Hitler
Bitch slap his fascist cancer ass
With carburetors and crankshafts
Sweat that pored white, yellow, red and black
Men and women dripping River Rouge blood
Mexicantown to Black Bottom to Eastern Market
Rise up from the flood with riverfront love
Temptations and Tiner, Aretha and Dinah Washington
Queen of the Blues bowed to red, white, black and blue
By the Queen of England herself

So kick 'em out, kick out what you all about
Let me be who I am a stone bad fist of a man
Augustus Woodward and Lodge and Dodge
Iron ore gorged from the pregnant peninsula
Chrysler and Ossian Sweet rolling in a posse
With Kwame Kilpatrick's textmessage army
Kicking Belle Isle style with a boomba smile
Hank Ballard our Jefferson Avenue Orpheus,
At the old Purple Gang haven on Oakland Avenue
And John Lee still boogie on Hastings Street
Got my pistons pumpin' tailpipes eruptin'
4-barrel carburetor spittin' smokestack lightnin'
Hear that pop?  Cap or a muffler gone bad--
Don't nobody know till all the smoke clear

Contributor Bio

John Jeffire is the author of Motown Burning, a novel set during the 1967 Detroit Riot and its aftermath. In 2005, the book was named Grand Prize Winner in the Mount Arrowsmith Novel Competition and in 2007 it won a Gold Medal for Regional Fiction in the Independent Publisher Awards. Jeffire's stories, poems, and essays have appeared in magazines and journals such as Parenting, The English Journal, America, Into the Teeth of the Wind, and The South Coast Poetry Journal. His first book of poetry, Stone + Fist + Brick + Bone, is now available at The Aquarius Press on its Living Detroit Series. He currently lives in Clinton Township, MI, with his wife, daughter, son, and two hyperactive Jack Russells. To learn more about Jeffire and his work, visit www.Johnjeffire.com.