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    Birth Marks
    Birth Marks
    Birth Marks
    Ebook129 pages1 hour

    Birth Marks

    By Jim Daniels

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    About this ebook

  • A Detroit native, Jim Daniels is a well-known author in Michigan
  • Birth Marks has strong regional ties to Detroit, MI, where Jim Daniels spent his childhood, and to Pittsburgh, PA, and Ohio where he has lived the past 32 years. Daniels says of his writings on Detroit: "The writer Richard Price said that where you’re from is like 'the zip code of your heart,' and for me, that’s true. I carry Detroit around with me in my heart no matter where I’m at—it’s my permanent address... I write in part for all those I grew up with that did not appear in any of the books I read in school. I write for and because of them to say, hey, listen up—these lives are important."
  • Detroit has been a hot topic in the book world lately, with publication of two controversial coffee table photo books on the ruins of Detroit, prompting heated debates about “ruins porn."
  • Daniels is poetry editor for LABOR: A WORKING-CLASS HISTORY OF THE AMERICAS, a scholarly journal. His poems deal with working-class people in urban landscapes.
    • LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBOA Editions Ltd.
    Release dateAug 19, 2013
    ISBN9781938160172
    Birth Marks
    Author

    Jim Daniels

    Jim Daniels’s recent books include Apology to the Moon, Birth Marks, and Eight Mile High (stories). He is also the writer/producer of a number of short films, including The End of Blessings. Born in Detroit, Daniels is the Thomas Stockham Baker University Professor at Carnegie Mellon University.

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      Book preview

      Birth Marks - Jim Daniels

      1. MegaEverything

      Birth Marks

      She was stymied by pizza, but not

      by ice cream. She ordered vanilla

      for its sound. She reigned as Queen

      of the Isle of You Decide.

      He had the patience of a splinter

      working its way to the surface

      and the business sense

      of a herd of cattle.

      She used her checkbook

      to prop up every minor purchase.

      He used cash for the benefit

      of its traceless disappearance.

      In short, he was a bad magician

      and she the nervous assistant,

      a match manufactured in a damp swamp.

      Yet they set off enough sparks

      to produce me out of a hat,

      dazed by their applause.

      Technically, I can’t remember

      that far back, but I can make up

      a few things, given the lack

      of memory and receipts.

      MegaEverything

      Generals gathered in their masses

      Just like witches at black masses

      Evil minds that plot destruction

      Sorcerer of death’s construction

      War Pigs, Black Sabbath

      The kid with stringy, blond hair

      and torn Megadeth t-shirt

      plagiarized song lyrics in his poem.

      Black Sabbath? I said.

      In my tiny gray office, he idly kicked

      the metal desk, not meeting

      my eyes. But then, he never did.

      [image: box]

      1972, Michigan State Fairgrounds.

      Black Sabbath ripped through the sharp

      muffle of Paranoid on the distant stage

      while I guzzled malt liquor from quart bottles

      on a gloomy Saturday afternoon.

      Ozzy stalking onstage scared me

      in a familiar Detroit way—like a biker gang

      crashing a high school party. I shook

      it off. I raised my fist.

      [image: box]

      He said turning in the lyrics was a test

      but would go no further. Had I passed?

      Those lyrics, the only semi-coherent thing

      he’d turned in all term.

      He could’ve fooled me with Megadeth lyrics.

      Perhaps he had. We agreed that he should

      drop. He hesitated at the door

      like there might be one more thing.

      [image: box]

      Sixteen. My ears buzzed

      with dark-star feedback—

      barking dogs, bloody teeth, fragments

      of a thorough ass-kicking.

      Ozzy’s wire-cutter rasp asked

      what happened when we died

      and where, exactly, was the soul?

      When a thunderstorm arced down on us,

      no one fled. We stood and took it.

      [image: box]

      Poetry was all I had that wasn’t toxic.

      I should’ve been easier on the kid.

      His name was Chris. He slumped away,

      black boots clomping against the floor,

      and I never saw him again.

      [image: box]

      The bitter mascara of the unrepentant

      and the flawed jewel of self-absorption.

      Ozzy’s damaged now, beyond coherence.

      He hadn’t yet bitten the head

      off a bat when I saw him in ’72.

      He only had to do it once. The rest of us,

      Chris, we think about it every day

      under the black, incoherent moon.

      I Dreamt I Wrote a Poem About Jazz

      I wrote Miles, Bird, Trane. I almost wrote Dizzy,

      then I started thinking about Dizzy Dean,

      the last 30-game winner in the N. L., 1934.

      Denny McLain went 31-6 for Detroit in ’68.

      I was there when he won his 30th. Dizzy on hand

      to offer congratulations. Young Reggie Jackson—

      already the straw that tainted the drink—hit two homers

      for the A’s that day. What was he stirring? A martini?

      A time bomb? In ’68, when the wind blew in

      off the river, Detroit still reeked wet smoke from the riots.

      We’d taken the bus downtown for ladies/retirees day—

      50 cents for kids under 12, so we scrunched

      down with our shit-eating grins

      for the ticket seller behind bars who didn’t give

      a shit, just wanted bribes for the good seats.

      Somewhere in the city, Iggy Pop tried out lyrics

      to I Wanna Be Your Dog and somewhere

      Aretha cleared her throat and somewhere the MC5

      turned it up another notch. After the game, we waited

      on the wrong side of the street for the bus home

      as the sun vamoosed, Billy Bowen clutching the two-ton ham

      he won in the lucky number scorebook drawing.

      Some young black men joined us, and Billy just

      handed over the ham because our pastor

      had been mugged outside the stadium last year,

      but one guy said Keep your damn ham, white boy!

      and we got on a bus that only took us further from home.

      Denny McLain’s in jail for the second time—raiding

      the pension fund of his own company. Denny drank

      a case of Pepsi every day. He had one more good season,

      then spontaneously combusted. Like Detroit in ’67. One match,

      and nobody to blow out the candle. When his brother Paul

      pitched a no-hitter in game two of a double-header

      back in the ’30s, Dizzy said If I’ d a knowed Paul

      was gonna throw a no-hitter I woulda throwed one too—

      I mean Dizzy Gillespie. But all I know about jazz

      could fit into one of Dizzy’s cheeks. Those cheeks

      were the size of pregnant grapefruit, but still. If I’d a knowed.

      Dizzy Dean, Southern boy. Before Jackie Robinson landed

      and his spikes caught in the dirt, and held.

      I always drank my liquor straight and paid the price for it

      directly. I haven’t had a shot in eighteen years, and even that,

      a reluctant toast. I can’t pretend to like jazz. Iggy’s music

      mixed in the pounding din of car factories. We

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