issue 6.1 - environments
A Poem For New York Water Tables
By Gavin DuBois
I learned recently our city
made a pinhole of its hands
and gifted us narrowness
to preserve water, such as our usual
swimming hole, fed from Verkeerder
Kill, then into the Hudson, then again
into the ocean. My mother wax-coated
her images of these streams, boughs
and root systems like cadaver
veins, to make memory physical.
Her own grandmother told us that
houses were carried away from
their doomed valley like newborns. Some say
you can still spy church spires peeking
above the surface of Catskill reservoirs.
All of our stories are about disappearing, or
transforming, or time blurred like oil paintings.
For instance: a man was born at the mouth
of Kaaterskill, named Rip Van Winkle. He fell
asleep young and awoke old, his beard
white like Shawangunk cliffs pouring still
more water out through Peterskill,
and Wallkill, and Vernooy Kill, and more.
Rip found his town spread out, broader,
his wife dead and his daughter grown.
Everyone here is homeless, our fishing boats
chained to recession, rivers diverted through
baseball fields, placenames as headstones.
What premonition lives within the truth
that all of our creeks are called Kill?
Fish Ladder || Going Home
By John K. Kruschke
One Habitat, Three Houses, One Fish
Los Angeles, California, 2005
"Can anyone tell me who this is? Any guesses? Anyone?"
The man is dressed entirely in khaki. Dull, pale beige, identical to the savanna grass beneath his boots. A sticker over his breast pocket attempts to declare his name in quick sharpie. At ten years old, moody, impervious, I don’t bother to work it out. It is morning on the last good Sunday in April, and I am standing with my parents on the bank of Chatsworth Reservoir. Fifty feet from my front door.
"It's a pheasant," someone shouts.
"Or a condor!"
My mother nudges me. Go on, you know the answer. Brown-black wings, bone white beak, leather head, red as a cockscomb.
"It's a turkey vulture," I say to the carrion eater, and not the twenty adults who turn to look at me.
"That's right," says the man, "that's absolutely right!"
His enthusiasm is contagious, as is his approval. The adults nod, smile, and despite myself, I smile too.
"Unlike many of their scavenging cousins, the turkey vulture cannot thrive in urban environments. They require a large, open variety of scrubland in order to hunt, breed, and raise their chicks. Without the lands here at Chatsworth Nature Preserve, so close to the city, turkey vultures like this guy would be unable to nest, unable to feed, and eventually, cease to exist."
Five months later, three days after my eleventh birthday, Chatsworth Nature Preserve is in flames.
"No cars! Keep behind the line!"
"Get back!"
"Residents only!"
A fireman stands guard behind a caution tape barrier. He is checking IDs, licenses, water bills, whatever's on hand as ash flurries hot and fast through the air. The evacuation order goes into effect at sundown. Compulsory, do not expect rescue. But it's a school day, a weeknight during rush hour, and the freeway is on fire.
My parents abandon the car beside a line of other empty cars stretching right out of the canyon. I am not afraid as my mother shepherds me forward, as my father steps up to the fireman. Instead, I remind myself that it was just my birthday.
Rules are, nothing bad can happen.
"We're on Valley Circle," says my father, "you have to let us through."
He is used to being obeyed, used to giving orders. My mother hands over her license.
"Our dog is in the house," she says.
"And my fish," I want to add, but her vise grip warns me to be quiet.
The fireman looks at my mother. He is sweating beneath his helmet, flushed cheeks black with soot.
"You have forty minutes," he says, "take what you can carry, keep your head down."
He doesn't say good luck. He doesn't have to. The sky is red over my parent's house. Blood red and choking in smoke. I can see the orange whip of wildfire from my bedroom window, and over the reservoir, a dozen turkey vultures, circling.
"Chin? Get him in the carrier!"
"The passports! Close the windows!"
I hold my fishbowl in both hands. In my backpack, I take my diary, three coyote teeth, a copy of Alice in Wonderland.
When my mother comes to get me, I've been ready for five minutes.
"There's a turkey vulture on the fence," I say, "do you think it'll be alright?"
"You can't take that," she says, angry, frantic. She is pointing at my fish.
"I'm not leaving him. I won't."
"Yes you will," she snaps, "we'll get you another."
Tears spring up in a fury and fall like ashes into the bowl of water in my arms.
"But it was just my birthday.”
A shield, a trump card. But dread coils in my stomach.
"Put the bowl down now," says my mother. She is also used to giving orders.
And because I am used to doing as I'm told, I obey.
We walk back to the car in silence. A silence that lingers for days as coverage of the blaze airs on repeat in our hotel room.
In the end, my parents lose a single patio umbrella, their home spared by the same fifty feet separating the front door from the reservoir. The Topanga Fire burns 24,000 acres of scrubland, one turkey vulture habitat, three houses, one fish.
I never ask for another.
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
— Genesis 1:28
Chasing its
own shadow, it arrives.
From above, last of its kind—a
stretch mark across the stomach of the world
(but what was given birth to?), metabolic scar. Crest
and br eak ing apart around me, all the
rain of an acidified ocean washes away
and mortuary chambers of the sea
e mptied. And the coral skeletons;
the hollow shells of clams, oysters,
and mussels; the disintegrating starfish;
the desiccated whales, sea lions, manatees;
the cracked and etiolated armour of the lobsters,
the shrimp, and the crabs; finally the fish (the fish!)—
spoiled iridescence rippling, the shark fins, the salmon scales
and tuna tails: crisis sewage buries the departed sand. Rotten mackerel
land at my feet, rotten empty eye sockets staring, accusing. They were energy, fuel,
all what we thought we needed. But what was given birth to? The water broke, and the earth died.
View From a Hot Air Balloon
By Michael Mintrom
This morning, as the balloon climbed,
land and water shone back—
tight patterns scratched
and patched across hard ground.
Curve of river, crease of valley, shoulder of hill.
Rows of trees, grapevines.
The rail yard. Factories. That plume of smoke.
Back on the ground, river runs cloudy then clear;
roads cross and part, light seeps from windows.
Faces appear, then disappear.
The Gap of Noon
By William Doreski
With gestures of frustration
and weeping in the locker room,
our favourite football team lost
the major game of the season
by missing a penalty kick.
But they still earned a fortune
in TV rights and endorsements.
We’ve never endorsed anything
except certain herbs and spices
of local and global significance.
No one pays us. Only whispers
of peeling bark in Sumatra
and bursting seedpods in Java
embody our eager patronage.
Now evening arrives at midday,
sketching with chalky strokes
that curdle the cream in our coffee.
Winter’s always like this. It hangs
from the trees and looks morose.
It plasters ice on the sidewalks
and looks sheepish when we fall.
The day has cracked into halves
like an ice floe on the river.
We step across the gap of noon
and for a moment stare into
an abyss so narrow and deep
it could be the wound we regretted
both inflicting and receiving
in the bombast of our youth.
