Site Navigation Information Prose Poetry Art On the Stump Serials Question of the Week About the Authors Links and Awards Message Board			Douglas Tanoury Spirit of Detroit Weathered bronze is transformed Into a carved jade sculpture That wears only a loincloth And sits lotus style In a stance of introspection And I have often thought He is too muscular and strong Indeed, to embody this city He should be as skinny and gaunt as Gandhi His face less Caucasian His eyes more Mongoloid His nose more Negroid And his head shaved bald like a Buddhist monk And he should hold In one hand uplifted an handgun In the other a knife And across his torso his body should bear All the scars of bullet entry wounds and surgeries I would melt down this bronze And recast it To capture incarnate in the metal A spirit that this city more closely resembles That depicts violence and ignorance The wholesale impoverishment of my home Want to respond to this poem? Do it here! Return to Detroit Poems