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Sunday, August 03, 2025

MASS SHOOTING #1

MARATHON GAS STATION, DETROIT, MI, JULY 28, 2025 


by Ron Riekki




"huge

And beautifully black as he ever was, but dead."”

—Margaret Danner,

Best Loved of Africa"

 

per the Mass Shooting Tracker website,

as of Jul 29, 2025,

there have been 296 mass shootings in the U.S.

and 6,828 mass shootings since Jan 1, 2023

https://massshootingtracker.site



I’m at a Marathon gas station on Puritan Ave.

And I think of ‘puritan’ and ‘marathon,’ of

 

worship and war, of running and ran, and

we hadn’t had a mass shooting in Michigan

 

for the entire month of July, and then, back-

to-back, two of them. I’m at a Marathon gas

 

station on Puritan Ave and it’s empty, and

then it’s packed. All of the pumps are full

 

if you count the one I’m blocking. And I’m

talking to the man inside who reminds me

 

of Abe Vigoda in The Godfather, except

more skeletal, and he’s standing behind

 

what I think is bulletproof glass and he’s

telling me, “Police.” He’s saying, “Go to

 

the police,” that he won’t answer any of

my questions and my questions are just:

 

How do we stop the violence? He waves

me off. It’s hard to hear him through

 

the glass. Money’s getting slid through

the cracks below the glass next to me.

 

The most polluted area of Michigan is

southwest Detroit, in the top five per-

 

cent of worst polluted areas in the U.S.,

The 48217. That’s where the Marathon

 

Petroleum Corporation is. An area with

air so bad I get headaches immediately

 

soon as I’m there. Marathon’s worth

between 50 and 85 billion dollars. And

 

the transactions keep happening. And

two people were murdered and two

 

injuries less than twenty-four hours ago

from where we’re standing, as if no-

 

thing ever happened. “Police,” he says,

behind the glass. “Go to the police.”

 

I ask if there’s anything he can say

about how we lessen the violence.

 

He shakes his head no, not knowing

if it means there’s nothing he has to

 

say, or if it means there’s nothing

that can be done. Or both. Outside,

 

cars pull up, a trike motorcycle,

music loud. And everybody but

 

the one employee inside, Black.

On the way here, I passed ruin porn,

 

a sole building in an overgrown lot

green with nature and the entire

 

house painted deep green, broken

windows green, roof green, all one

 

paint. The medium-dark rich green

of dollar bills. And the firearm and

 

ammunition industry in the U.S.

is worth almost 100 billion dollars.

 

More than Marathon gas. What

color is gas? It depends on how

 

it’s dyed. Two girls walk outside,

no car, just walking, cheery, yellow

 

T-shirt. An empty church nearby.

Puritan Ave. Another church not

 

far. Empty. It’s Tuesday. It’s

90 degrees. Gas is often the color

 

of the sun—yellow, amber. I ask

them if they heard about the mass

 

shooting. She tells me she heard

the gunshots, that she lives on this

 

block, that her whole family lives

on this block, that she limits her-

 

self to this block. She tells me

she feels protected if she stays

 

on this block, points, says, “I

don’t go down there,” another

 

block, so close. I ask how we

can lessen the violence. She

 

says she doesn’t know, says,

maybe “police on every corner,”

 

then says it’s the police that

cause the violence, then asks

 

me if I’m police. No, I say, no,

I tell her I’m not asking for any

 

names, that I want to know how

we lessen the violence. She says,

 

“I don’t know.” She says that

“everybody is fucked up mentally.”

 

And we talk about mental health. And

we talk about guns. One of the two

 

girls says we have to start with

the gun problem, then says, no,

 

that it’s impossible, that it’s too

easy to get a gun. A guy walks up,

 

in a Ja Morant jersey. Not Isiah

Thomas, not Cade Cunningham.

 

Ja. Morant has multiple gun-

related incidents. A top-ten

 

selling NBA jersey with its

symbolic meaning: Ja’s gun

 

gestures after buckets, Ja’s

Instagram videos holding

 

guns, Ja’s death-defying jaw-

dropping dunks. Memphis:

 

an eleven-hour drive away.

He says, “mental health.”

 

I want to ask him how we

get it here. I can’t even get

 

it myself. I called a mental

health hotline and the hot-

 

line worker herself told me

that she doesn’t even have

 

insurance, can’t get therapy

herself. If the working can’t

 

get therapy, how can the poor?

How can the working poor?

 

We talk. We talk about how

there’s an overwhelming

 

ease to get guns and a thick

wall preventing the ability

 

to get mental health care.

She tells me her father was

 

shot at the same gas station.

She tells me her father was

 

also shot over there, and

she points to where a bank

 

once stood, long gone now.

She tells me of incidents at

 

the gas station, other ones,

other shootings, how it’s

 

“constant,” how a “little

girl was killed there,” when

 

she was age eleven. Imagine

being age eleven and a girl

 

your age is killed at a gas

station right by where you

 

live. What keeps popping

up in the conversation is

 

the words, “I don’t know,”

that solutions don’t seem

 

feasible. While I talk to

her, the guy in the Ja jersey

 

gets the phone number of

the girl he’s standing next

 

to. Everyone starts walking

away. Everything goes back

 

to normal. The gas station

is busy. The sun, blinding.



Ron Riekki co-edited Undocumented: Great Lakes Poets Laureate on Social Justice.