WAGE LOVE 

By Michelle E. Brown

Her streets no longer lined with trees

Branches arching across streets

Paved with hopes and dreams

Now minefields of disrepair

Potholes, broken sidewalks

Lots and playgrounds strewn with litter

Vacant lots, crumbling buildings

No neighbors sitting on stoops sharing stories

No quartets under streetlamps singing songs

Store fronts sit vacant

While residents wait for buses

Always late for a trip to no where

She is maligned, misrepresented,

Violated, raped

Stripped of her authority

She weeps

As her people suffer

As her people thirst

She watches

Managed neglect for the benefit of profits

But she’s a queen.

Her majesty does not lie in institutions

Credit ratings, political wrangling

Her majesty cannot be bankrupted

Because she’s a queen

Of, for and by the people

She is the people

And she/they are rich

Rich in spirit, rich in art

Feeding her people from gardens

Growing in forgotten lots

Entrepreneurs, innovators, dreamers

Rebuilding neighborhoods

Re-spiriting communities

Calling her people, all people

Black, Brown, White, Young, Old

From across the street

From around the world

To rise up, to stand up

Not in war, but with voices raised

To wage love

She is a queen

She is Detroit.