2005 Cave Canem Poetry Prize
Winner: Constance Quarterman Bridges for Lions Don't Eat Us
Judge: Sonia Sanchez
Publisher: Graywolf Press

DETROIT
{1916}

By Constance Quarterman Bridges

Your smoky scent is musky
in my nose.
A metal taste is loud in these
cafes and jook joints.
Foreign food and foreign
faces make me long for home.

I want to be your child
lie on your breast, hear
your heartbeat, feel
damp warm skin beneath
your blouse. I want
comfort from your arms.

My journey has been long.
I am a dark-skin man-child.
My feet still track southern clay.
Kinfolk cried when I left home
said their arms were not strong
enough to hold me.

Father smiled urged me to go.
I saw friends leave wagons
standing in streets
and cram northern trains.
I left boll weevils, floods, dying
crops and cruelty.

I have grown to love you, Detroit.
I don’t want to be your child.
I want to be your lover
to feed you
Georgia grits in exchange
for your grit and glamour.

I love your clanks and bangs
hammering and wheels.
I love your whistle voice
calling men to you.
I love your acid smell of paint.
I love the smudge of your lips.

Your smoke black hair
doesn’t rest on your shoulders
but rises up in plumes.
Your slate gray eyes
pierce the black night.
In the morning you arise
fluids flowing and body oiled

sleek and ready to stretch
farther and faster than
the fastest racehorse.
You have a hunger for men
with strong bodies, hands,
legs and muscles.

I can be that, fresh unending
work hands and muscles
a body primed for labor.
Only let me rest in evenings
on your breast and test the steel
of your thighs.

DETROIT {1916} From Lions Don't Eat Us (Graywolf Press, 2006) by Constance Quarterman Bridges, with permission of the author.

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