Detroit 20/20

A man stands solemnly in front of a plain tan wall wearing a brightly colored coat with a southwestern pattern over a white collared shirt and a bolo tie

“M-10” By David Joez Villaverde

For Lizzie

In the fifties, a Vulcan bomber fell from the sky and crashed somewhere in the east side. I think about that sometimes when we take the Lodge and you’re tired of your murder podcasts and I am too exhausted to put anything else on. I think about how your grandfather once owned part of the Fisher Building. How the speed limit is only fifty-five till you get to Southfield. How you got pulled over once for speeding but got off with a warning. I think of anything to keep my mind off your father. Off cancer. Off dying. Hospice.

It never works. Thought is too associative. When I see a Lions decal, I think of the game he took us to. Late in the fourth quarter, when we lined up for the onside, it still felt like there was a chance. During chemo, when they gave him too much Benadryl and he started hallucinating, we laughed because it felt like a beginning. Weeks ago, we held onto the idea of dog dewormer when we needed something to hold.

Sometimes you can want the miraculous so bad you forget how it’s already there. How being down seven against a ten-and-one team with three minutes left is its own victory. How outliving a prognosis by a year is nothing short of divine intervention. That’s the thing about miracles, they aren’t usually what you pray for. When that bomber crashed, only the six crew were killed.

“Two Rivers” by Carmen Malis King

Freighter horns echo through my bedroom walls late at night; their whale songs paint a silken, smoky trail up Junction Avenue, reassuring me I’m in the company of other nocturnal dwellers. I am lulled to sleep by the blanket of dark waves the freighters course through in the night. I hear the River, but I only see the water when my family packs into our car to admire it from bridges, crossing over to Windsor or for a drive around Belle Isle.

These same freighter sounds are part of my husband’s childhood, too. We both grew up two miles away from the Detroit River. For him it was gated yet accessible — Grosse Pointe private parks with swimming pools, a movie theater, an ice-skating pond. For me it was a sliver of public parks, concrete slabs on contested lands between the truck rattle of the Ambassador Bridge and the grey haze of Zug Island. For him, summer air thick with fishflies sticking to windshields. For me, putrid factory air creeping through closed homeroom windows on winter days.

We now live far from the River yet near a wide avenue named after a Grand River, knowing the freighter sounds won’t sing our son to sleep. From our bedroom window, the avenue murmurs like River waves lapping over the shuttered Boblo docks. In the night’s stillness, I still hear the whale songs forever imprinted in my memory, finding comfort and home in this industrial biomim

A closeup of a woman with long hair draped over her shoulders and sun hitting her face

“The Haunting of the Cabacier Estate” by Cherise Morris

The third winter without heat broke me.

She was a big-body build, a real hard-knocks-sorta-bitch. The guy who lived here before left his everything. An occultist myself, I found it fitting the last tenant was a tarot-reading-astrologer-pagan. His remnants in still lifes: a drawer of socks, dream catchers collecting dust and dead skin cells, half-used bars of soap in the shower next to a little bag of hair. He left running.

The family before him, the landlords, were the dysfunctional Catholic archetypes.

When my partner and I bought the house, I was immediately attuned to the wretched energies we’d crossed. I can’t imagine how much palo santo and cedar I’ve burned trying to undo the demons we found in the packed-full basement and attic, which included a large garbage can full of putrid smelling goop we believed was a dead body in chemicals.

I once saw a dead boy standing outside, two dead children ran through the house, an Indigenous brother shot dead in the surrounding grasses. A medium and a warlock in a haunted house with ghosts and spirits all their own living the Detroit dream: buy a house, fix it up, make a home, build a legacy. But we’re making more than a home, a work of art, homestead paradise complete with a half-finished rainwater harvesting system, chickens and ducks, and geothermal heat. And yes, the foundation needs repair and the ghosts still need tending to, but fortunately it was the power to transmute which brought us together.

“The Medicine Cabinet” by Amanda Itria

The medicine cabinet in the first-floor bathroom hadn’t been touched for thirty years. Recessed into the wall, it remained hidden. Then, one cold, quiet day, I was scraping wallpaper from the aged walls and discovered the mirror was a door. So, I opened it.

Each shelf was haphazard and full, as if the owner left in mid-routine, without the awareness that they would not be returning to tidy up. There was a glass bottle of Old Fashioned after shave talc, a lavender bottle marked Jasmin Cologne, clip-on earrings, and a tube of cream rolled so tight, the text disappeared. The sparse labels promised to slow time with their optimistic typeset.

I had an insatiable urge to run my fingers over these artifacts and feel their weight in my hands.

Arsha Rubyan’s family came to the United States to escape the Armenian Genocide. Later in her life, she moved into the house on Arden Park Boulevard, where I now live. Left behind was an old photo of her in front of the ivy-covered house. In it, she is wearing a plaid pleated skirt, a navy jacket, and big round glasses. Her bright white smile reflected the sun.

In the cabinet I noticed a tiny box inlaid with pictures of daffodils, forget-me-nots, and daisies. It almost sparkled in the morning light. I reached forward to peek at the contents and an arthritic hand met mine to stop me.

I can live here but this is still her home.

“Detroit as The Beauty Supply” by Nia Shumake

When I was a preteen I would ride down 7 mile on my way to school and count every church, coney island, liquor store and beauty supply. Being a pastor's kid in the city obviously my first encounter with salvation was in the church. But the second time I got saved was at a storefront beauty supply on Harper and Cadieux.

I had been bleeding outside of a city for twelve years, waiting to be made clean.
I bore the load of a rose thorned crown. Sin, shame, unworthiness.
But that store had a come-as-you-are policy. There, you could be washed new.

On Saturday mornings I’d rush in with my auntie, sisters and older cousin excited to see what miracles could be performed.
Miracles before the first day of school, proms and recitals.
God never was a respecter of persons when it came to his miracles and neither was the beauty supply.

There was blue magic for Aaliyah’s silk presses.
Wrapping set paper to slick down Anita’s pixie.
A special something for whatever The Supremes needed before they ever rivalled The Beatles.
A pick and afro for afrocentric Aretha.
It was grit, glamour and a whole lot of glory.

There wasn’t much to testify about when I went away to college,
I found a new church but never a good nearby beauty supply.
It wasn’t until my older cousin passed suddenly, where I wandered into a storefront, searching for nostalgia only to be saved again.

Untitled by Mallory Goldman

2799 W Grand Blvd Detroit, MI 48202, 6th floor waiting room, “No visitors allowed.” The roof over my head wasn’t my home, but I had clocked enough hours that week that I had forgotten what color sheets painted my bed, let alone what they felt like on my skin. I stood there in the floor to ceiling windows, pressing my forehead to the glass, leaning heavily into the picturesque skyline of a city so loved, and fading. We were living in a nightmare of unwordedness. From ventilators down our throats to knees on necks, Detroit was suffocating. And there I barely stood, begging the city to just slow down and breathe with me, “please, just breathe.”

“How are you holdin’ up?” they’d ask. I couldn’t ever find the words. Much like the words I couldn't find holding Her supple brown hand sporting sparkling blue nails, when She asked if she would make it. For days, I would search high and low for all the words I wanted to say in response to a continuous crying telephone that never spoke of drought.

The only words I did know, I knew by heart, like an abandoned 'Please, Mister Postman' record set to repeat endlessly at its crack; They sounded something like, “I’m.sorry.for.your.loss.” “Please.be.safe.” pause.

For all the stories we buried this year, the histories we’ll never record, the wisdom that will never be handed down- there, I succumbed to that breathtaking Detroit skyline, in that 6th floor waiting room window.

Untitled by Rachel Harkai

Just west of downtown Detroit, along the river, a ziggurat rises. Poured of cement, its rings rise concentrically toward a slender peak where even the rarefied air still reeks of sulfur from factories forging steel downriver. In place of stars, the porchlights of Windsor's bungalows twinkle beside the reds and blues of towering casinos reflected in the river’s glass below.

Lovers sit, their arms wrapped. Children chase each other, gaining speed until they squeal and finally collapse. Freighters crawl past like wonders, so big to be as buoyant as this. A stray jogger or two happens by, but for the most part people here arrive and then stay.

I come to watch the men fishing. There are four of them tonight with poles anchored between coolers, their rods bending under the weight of some massive, writhing muscle heaving against the line. Whether the fishermen are friends or strangers I do not know, but as soon as one hauls up a fish, we all feel like compatriots, cheering and backslapping and remarking on its size.

In ancient Mesopotamia ziggurats held shrines at their apexes; they were places of worship to gods said to rise from mountains in the east. On good days, I like to think we are here to worship each other. We pay our respects in silence, in complicity, in the ways we let drags from cigarettes and sips from tall boys wrapped in brown paper do our talking while we share a perch together in the widening dark.

Untitled by MJ Eastin

The thing about a siren is it's supposed to get quieter. Somehow we know. We hear it scream past, on a busy road, broken concrete strewn with litter and autumn leaves, dissipating, growing faint.

It didn't get quieter. It stayed constant, catching their breath in a vice, hot and tight, all panic - no disco. It made them feel crazy, rusty nails and bone ache. They’d come to Belle Isle for a reprieve.

Secured a cup of coffee and a maple donut from Rose’s Fine Foods. Crossed the bridge. The coffee was growing cold and so were their hands. They were a southern transplant, by way of the hazy Carolinas. Their blood needed to thicken. As did their brown skin, protection and reflection of a city that felt like a series of beautiful calluses that no one has the right to judge.

Wandering past the glass gilt conservatory they wondered who made the choices. To have the city cops train maneuvers in the first empty lot with their sirens on full blast, a demented alley-cat wail. To have two stark white gazebos, each in their own grove of yellow blazed hardwoods, separated by the street cutting ribbons up and down the island. One, meticulously maintained. The other? Abandoned to the elements, a budgetary sacrificial lamb. They found a curb, lit up a cig and smoked it, ash and coffee grounds, stuffing the remnants in their coat pocket.

No sense in littering.

No sense in sirens.

No crime. No chase.

Just choices.

“Good Night Al Kaline” by Jim Novak

John and Jackie moved in to the White House
There was twisting and Elvis, and Patsy Cline
Ball cards were a penny and I bought hundreds
And none more precious than the Tigers’ Kaline.

Listening to the Tigers while mom did dishes
Great seats in our kitchen with Harwell and Kell
Bedtime in pajamas with my little transistor
Til mom said goodnight, the way I knew so well:

Goodnight Al Kaline and Rocky Colavito
Jake Wood, Billy Bruton, and Norman Cash
We’ll find you in the box score in tomorrow’s paper,
Goodnight Detroit Tigers, we’ll catch you later.

Dad saved me a card I keep on my desk,
Al’s ‘61 stat’s on the back are displayed
On the front he’s swinging, it looks like he knew
He’d teach and delight us, for many decades

Goodnight Al Kaline and Rocky Colavito
Jake Wood, Billy Bruton, and Norman Cash
We’ll find you in the box score in tomorrow’s paper,
Goodnight Detroit Tigers, we’ll catch you later.

Some heroes are models of grace and skill
Some help us escaping, from the salt mine
Some heroes speak to the soul of a city
Detroit in my day, we had Mister Kaline

Detroit is a gritty city, Great Lakes water flows by
Making cars and steel’s not pretty, folks step up, time goes by ….
Hard working and humble, quick to learn from a stumble,
Honest effort, no tricks, like Mr Tiger, “Number Six” …

Untitled by Kathryn Nowinski

From Kercheval, the back alleys are clear enough to pass through. Cracked cement, grasses, and dying, late-fall weeds and wildflowers shift to cobblestone and I imagined being a servant or call girl to these early industrial mansions. I thought about the construction workers framing condos up a few blocks. My cousin Bryan and his husband Tom used to own a house around the corner. There was a restaurant I used to love in this neighborhood, it closed. We went there once for my birthday, the year my partner Addy threw me a surprise party at Motor City Wine. That was the first birthday I had Bishop, I was living in the sad-bad house off Dexter. Someone left a dead cat on my front steps. My neighbor told me I should throw it in the garbage can, not to bother burying it in the freezing ground. The thaw is my favorite time of year. Ice floats on the River in giant globules, flat planes, and spikes. I climbed onto a compound ice float once, over one railing and under another when I was walking Bishop with Ad, who looked nervous. The water was the most beautiful color blue I have ever seen.

About this contest

JNT‘s Detroit 20/20 competition asked authors who worked or lived in the city to contribute creative flash nonfiction exploring Detroit as a narrative space in the year 2020. David Joez Villaverde was awarded first place for “M-10,” and Carmen Malis King received second place for "Two Rivers."

"Detroit as a Narrative Space"

The 2021 JNT Dialogue centered on the theme of Detroit, taking a look at how the city serves as a site that inspires narrative and gives rise to literary, artistic, and activist communities that shape its story. JNT was delighted to host a conversation with Detroit-based authors Desiree Cooper and kim d. hunter, discussing how their creative and activist work is shaped by their hometown.

Watch 2021 Dialogue