If it’s early enough, we can catch the sun washing over the pitched white sheets, which are freshly washed and about to be sun-dried, hanging over the fruit stands, where the vendors have placed baskets on the ground so that people will pick their produce: firm-fleshed cantaloupes and smooth-skinned watermelons, fuzzy peaches with yellow and orange swirls, tiny apricots that yield to even the slightest bite from small-toothed toddlers; the toddlers that waddle around the market with their mothers and fathers, and after the market they might head to Greektown for spinach spanakopita or honey-soaked baklava, or one of the diners serving Coney Islands, even though the best ones are close to Ford Field or Comerica but if there’s no Sunday baseball today not many people will be out by the fields; if there were a game today or if it were football season the diners would be packed with people watching the games and drinking beers and then all the game-goers would come after because the best Coney Islands are served here, but today is a take-it-easy Sunday, so people are just walking around the market,

and some will head to Belle Isle but probably not if they have little kids; sometimes Belle Isle is too much like the rest of Detroit, sometimes it’s where the dealers go and sell behind trees and from the trunks of their cars, or where women walk along the water in shoes that lace up their legs and all you see is breasts and bellies and legs and arms and that’s really most of the body, so people don’t always like to take their kids there; but of course there are lots of people without kids so Belle Isle is packed on Sundays with people who watch the women or just sit on the grass and eat chicken and Coneys and drink lemonade or beer or something cool, and you see tons of teenagers drinking beer because they don’t really police here much during the day, because if there are families there it freaks them out, too many cops makes them think something is wrong; and it is reasonable to be suspicious because it’s Detroit, it’s all broken windows and empty buildings, offices and apartments that no one goes to except dealers and gangs and cops and it’s a shady, shady place but it used to be really great; the place of Motown music, Motor City money, riverboats and downtown shows and crowded restaurants and sidewalks, but of course it’s not like that anymore; but it’s ok, and you know when you see fuck this city in spray paint on the walls of deserted buildings at least some part of that was written out of sadness, not anger, because the city’s fucked and there’s not a lot anyone can do about it except write it on the walls in spray paint, where it will stay because the city isn’t paying anyone to paint over the graffiti; there are bigger problems, but for now it’s just nice to think about the farmer’s market and how the air sweetens when fruits get knocked off their tables and the skin breaks open and juice slowly leaks out of the peaches and plums, and they bake in the open sunlight, warm and sticky, coloring the ground of Detroit.