Neo Nativity

NEO NATIVITY Metal ghosts of Detroit's best held together by rust and secrets, stacked five high, squashed and bent each holds memories- good times in their back seats family trips to the shore, drive-in movies, kids sleeping in the back on the ride home from Christmas. They may not be pretty but they do provide shelter. They cut the wind and block the rain, so she cowered beneath a wall of them. Face illuminated by lightning and pain she pulled him close; this man, Jose, who agreed, she clutches at him and wears his strength. No scratch for a motel, no rooms to be had anyway, and the Mustang died a couple of miles outside of town. The walk here in the rain was the least fun she could recall, until her water broke, joining the squalor at her feet and the labor began in earnest. The moment is real and as near as her next breath the pain that grips her steals that breath then gives it back in a rushing whoosh. She births, as women have done for millenia but she does it in this mechanical graveyard. A few moments of agony later Maria was a mother and her life had now taken a new direction. When the sky finally cleared she rocked her new son, wrapped in a vinyl tarp, and watched a single brilliant star flare to life over her head.