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what you’d find buried in the dirt under charles f. kettering sr. high school
- Wayne State University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
what you’d find buried in the dirt under charles f. kettering sr. high school (detroit, michigan) blood: soaked and caked on white socks, on blue mesh net t-shirts. the band leader’s blue baton and drumsticks. matchbooks’ gnarled sulfur spilling over newport cigarette butts. condoms in a few dull shades. tenth grade chemistry books modeling atomic fatty acids. half-sucked orange dum-dums tucked under detention slips. pictures from black hair cut out for pre-beautician consensus. broken black glitter belts with pink buckles shaped like lips. candle wax from last year’s vigil when de’andre “chucky” brown collapsed in the arms of his teammate. the teammate’s shoe prints rocking back and forth at the vigil, biting his lip. pieces of the black rubber mat below the entrance way, which we crossed every morning, teeth clenched. notes of consent that girls didn’t really mean and wish they hadn’t passed back. broken teeth. lost retainers. crumpled letters written to counselors and discarded for illegible handwriting. phone lists of abortion clinics. deflated 11 valentine’s day balloons with trampled white ribbon. sales ads on bassinette sets. my first boyfriend’s piano scarf. a phyllis hyman album cover. the path from the exit door behind the school through which certain boys would not see certain girls leave. torn-up progress reports. brass knuckles. two afro picks on opposite sides of the school. germs on a hall pass from a boy holding his crotch. rusty rebar dust. pigeon bones. stolen phone numbers. d.o.t. bus passes from 1960, the year of the groundbreaking. suspended driver’s licenses. broken glasses from ice-packed snowballs. unread pamphlets on charles f. kettering, a farmer with bad eyesight who invented the electric starter and an incubator for preemies. possum tails. original scores. crumpled poems written and torched detailing abuses. genital fluids. dna. envelopes from letters of acceptance to states far away. math teachers’ stolen answer keys torn and burned by cigarette lighters. cigarette lighters. hundreds of mcdonald’s fries containers because they flatten easily. weed. imitation diamonds from homecoming tiaras encrusted in shit-colored mud. research papers on kettering detailing his treatments for venereal disease which involved heating up patients in thermal cabinets until their body temperatures fevered at 130 degrees. teachers’ red pen marks on essay papers detailing abuses. empty sprint cards. broken cell phones. 12 [44.222.146.114] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 14:56 GMT) a splint a football captain was supposed to be wearing but decided made him look gay. a fat boys tape. pieces of torn blue-and-white starter jackets from the way boys wrestled each other to the ground in the spring. my first poetry journal. pages of its poems embossed with patterns of early name-brand gym shoes. crumpled suicide notes written in pencil and scorched with ashes. lost house keys. pictures of first crushes. bullets. unpublished articles by frustrated teachers who briefly looked into research findings, using the charles f. kettering instrument of school climate assessment detailing the psychological impact on students of external stressors normally associated with adulthood domestic patterns of abuse. fat shoelaces. bullet casings. a jim beam whiskey flask the old principal ditched thinking someone was coming. my last boyfriend’s lesson plan elaborately structured on the back of a comic book. imprints of my mother’s modest heel from crossing the barren frontal square at my graduation. free press articles on unnamed minors whose bodies were found in dumpsters near kettering. the crystallized block formed from the tissue my father handed me at graduation for tears i couldn’t explain. 13 ...