April 18 - Of Love and Other Disasters

Nemo's

So today is Champions Day in Detroit. I only found this out today, but in 1936 the Detroit Lions were NFL champions, the Detroit Tigers were MLB champions and the Detroit Red Wings were NHL champions. They created this holiday to commemorate the success. Since then, no city has ever held three championships simultaneously from the four current major American sports.

Sorry 'Sheed. Wrong year, but happy trails nonetheless.

This is also how Detroit earned the nickname, "City of Champions." Of course, since 1936 the fate of Detroit has been pretty well documented. However, just because the economy went south on the city, there are plenty of reasons why Detroit still deserves the nickname.

Let's talk about Detroit native and Wayne State alum Phillip Levine. As one of America's greatest living poets, his list of accolades deserves to be right up there with the Wings'. He's won the Pulitzer Prize, two National Book Awards, a National Book Critics Circle Award, multiple Guggenheim fellowships, and was the 2011-2012 U.S. Poet Laureate. None too shabby.

So, in honor of Detroit's day and one of her favorite sons, here's a poem from Levine's most recent book of poems, 2009's News of the World

Of Love and Other Disasters

The punch press operator from up north
met the assembler from West Virginia
in a bar near the stadium. Friday, late,
but too early to go home alone. Neither
had anything in mind, so they conversed
about the upcoming baseball season
about which neither cared. We could
be a couple, he thought, but she was
all wrong, way too skinny. For years
he'd had an image of the way a woman
should look, and it wasn't her, it wasn't
anyone he'd ever known, certainly not
his ex-wife who'd moved back north
to live with her high school sweetheart.
About killed him. I don't need that shit,
he almost said aloud, and then realized
she'd been talking to someone, maybe
to him, about how she couldn't get
her hands right, how the grease ate
so deeply into her skin it became
a part of her, and she put her hand,
palm up, on the bar and pointed
with her cigarette at the deep lines
the work had carved. "The lifeline,"
he said, "which one is that?" "None,"
she said, and he noticed that her eyes
were hazel flecked with tiny spots
of gold, and then—embarrassed—looked
back at her hand which seemed tiny
and delicate, the fingers yellowed
with calluses but slender and fine.
She took a paper napkin off the bar,
spit on it, and told him to hold still
while she carefully lifted his glasses,
leaving him half blind, and wiped
something off just above his left
cheekbone. "There," she said, handing
him back his glasses, "I got it," and even
with his glasses on, what she showed
him was nothing he could see, maybe
only make-believe. He thought, "Better
get out of here before it's too late," but
suspected too late was what he wanted.