Eighteen

We fly through night snow on bald tires, pointingour broke teenager cars like dowsers.Big, rusting Chryslers, black slush-chokedwheel wells, sliding over medians, spinning outon roadways, squinting through frost.Done with prayers.

Hundreds of us fleeing suburbia, fleeingthe pleas of La-Z-Boy fathers,Where are you going, can’t you stay home one night?Dipping below 8-Mile a generation before Eminem,into a Detroit of soot and corrosion, desperateafter years watching boys kiss girls.

Caroming off darkened skyscrapers, shunnedby trees-of-heaven that leer from church steeples,sewer gas rising like what’s left of idled factory workers,heads down, names sewn onto shirt pockets,paper bag lunches.Every forsaken thing on display.

        Not really rebellious, treading water        Not really angry, struggling to breathe        Not really scared, manic        Not really growing up, being born

Over rooftops, down fire escapes, tearingat pavement, at fear, sensing a door off the alley,a crack leaking light as life-affirmingas an oil drum fire. Starvedsince twelve, now gorging at eighteen,we make of this place, a chorus.