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TUSCARORA REVIEW 2016
2016 TUSCARORA REVIEW
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Detroit Summer 1949
Susan Morgan-Chandler
Body temperatures rise;
Brains slow.
Heavy salted sweat sticks to clothes,
Like unwanted ghosts, to body parts and crevasses.
Evening descends on Detroit.
Mother holds me in her arms, miserable from the heat
As Dad eagerly drives us to refuge.
Mother frets with him, hoping to make him unhappy too.
But he is unflappable.
The Packard is our escape.
We drive in silence.
Cross the blue-green Detroit River to its center, Canada on the far shore.
Touch land on Belle Isle,
Five miles of guaranteed relief
From the sweltering city tenement building called home.
My parents find a space and spread a blanket for us to sleep on.
Soon, lazily with low voices, the island is covered with other blankets.
Regular people, tired from work or caring for children,
Stretch out hot bodies into the coolness of the river’s air
As minds are lulled into dullness by the lapping of waves unto the shore.
I lie between my parents, a baby,
And stare up at the night sky from whence I come,
Engulfed in mother and father’s new love
Which can come fleetingly, early in marriage.
My parents quiet as a veil of stars softly reveals itself.
Under the night sky, held tightly between my parents,
River water swishing sounds
Remembered as in my mother’s womb.
I feel truly safe, welcomed and loved.
I am in Creation and Creation is in me.
Meghan McKee,
Untitled
—Mixed Media