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.
