Day-twah
is how you pronounced
it, my ostentatious friend,
as though the French
were still infesting
where the river
worms and bends ;
as if both Antoine
and Alphonse
had a share in
Motown Records ;
Soul Train
spinning a sultry
Édith Piaf ;
a fleur-de-lis
the crest of Hockey-
town, with neither wheel
nor red-dipped wing
discernible ;
the Tigers
plugging croissants—
for the stretch
in the bottom seventh.
And then there’s Sir Graves
Ghastly, sporting a
Parisian beret, out of his
screaky coffin,
desperately needing a tin of
WD-40, purchased
across the river, half
of the instructions
en Français—to the chagrin
of every Windsorite
around.
My dear, flamboyant
fellow, the French
were never the first—
it simply sounds
romantic
to the non-
Indigenous folk,
for the lovers of a
Hunter’s Moon,
painting the sky
aglow, like a drunken
Delacroix,
strolling within
the shadows
of Art Deco’s
Fisher Building ,
as if beneath
the Eiffel Tower,
ambling hand-in-hand,
toward the man
selling franks
on petite baguettes,
a smell of ripened
Brie that wafts
around him.
Andreas Gripp
RF Image
NOTE: Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac and Alphonse de Tonty founded Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit in 1701. The three Anishinaabe Nations whose homelands were in this area were the Ojibwe, the Odawa, and the Potawatomi.
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