the real thing

We could always tell a real Detroit car.
I mean the last ones made before
Detroit went plastic.
The ones with hubcaps shined
cleaner than mamma's china plates,
the V-8 powered whiskey stained
Eldo that perched itself at each
spotlight stoplight, the Grand
Marquis Mercury Brougham
bendin the streetlight reflection
splashin cross windshield.

Power windows, power doors
power air, power steering
that let one diamond pinky ring
finger twist the ton and a half
of torque around each corner
from Seven Mile to Cass Avenue.

Trunks that could sleep a family,
hoods you could lay your love on
without making a single dent,
doors that fit tight as a surgeon's glove.
each car lookin like it's got somethin streetwise
to say for every mile rolled under its rubber.

These Motown legends carried cruise controlled history,
style and sociology lessons in each cylinder,
gave us rules to live by, goals to meet.

Uncle Bob taught us to check a car's serial numbers
with the factory, to make sure it was manufactured
in the middle of the week,
when the many handed god of the assembly line wasn't Monday slow
from weekend hangover, or Friday frantic to punch
out and smear strip clubs with laughter.

Cousin John told us how the acre large factories
that birthed each chassis would rivet after rivet
drive a man crazy with routine - how turning a man
into machine was easy as long as the check was fat
and the bar was right around the corner.

We heard how Uncle Jim crossed the law
one night in South Carolina, and his best friend
became the Ford coupe that sped him to the Paradise
Valley of Motor City by next afternoon.

But Dad, you taught us that lesson that don't sink in
till your up and grown: the lesson we were too young
and first generation northern born to care about:
how a brown skinned shoe shine boy from the south
could come up north with nothin but his mamma's care
packaged hope in his arms, how he would sweat and worry
text books into his head, until one summer,
he'd tool a sky blue, four door, 440 c.i. Plymouth
back to Greenville, wife and three kids inside.

We were too busy drawing territorial lines
on the backseat cushions to notice,
too busy countin the Chryslers and Fords
we passed along the way to really understand
the way he came back each summer,
ready to front porch swing with grandma
and iced tea after the 13 hour drive and say yeah,
everything's okay up there, they treatin me just fine
up in Michigan these days. Look at them kids,
that wife, all driven here in that flawless
12 feet of Fury parked on the gravel drive,
all delivered here by these hands.

- Tyehimba Jess