Tag: space

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Excerpts from “the clearing”

brooklyn street under subway

By Xandi McMahon

walking down broadway

where in this beyond are they taking me?1

the rickety old tin-can car approaches its stop running mid-october breeze over the platform. at the broadway bridge we scream. loudly, freely, there is no reason not to. take us into sherman creek park and down harlem river drive. east to west we hold this narrow island. and

my eye—which rests only on beauty—holds            you (i don’t desire much else.) 2

the hundreds of streets escape into my calves and the muscles of my back. heaps of orange and brown we fall into the full family of it all. out of nowhere it becomes dark. enter rats!

at battery park we are silent. some amazement of joy that we had found our way out that far.3

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Suburban Wasteland: Beneath the Illusion of Idyllic Living

suburban roof

By McKenna Hall

I grew up in the suburbs, in a house that was identical to others, bound by picket fences and sprawling verdant yards. There were children with their grubby bare feet running throughout the streets and darting behind bushes. Lemonade stands and kickball and neighbors asking you to come out to play were scattered throughout like dozens of acorns. Paths in the forest led to fallen logs and secret forts. Summers were spent in the sticky humidity walking to the local pool or riding bikes that meticulously balanced slushies and bags of chips. It was a suburban fantasy. 

 

But then one day, some neighbors started to notice a smell. A rotting smell coming from the thick of the clouds hanging overhead. Illness and death had hid itself within these clouds, secretly running rampant throughout the streets. It latched itself within the people’s homes and deliquesced into their lemonade. Slowly, it found itself within the people and began to rot them as well. Some families decided to search for the source of this decay.  They peeled back the suburban facade in order to discover the true nature of the suburb’s being – the suburb was a sacrifice zone.

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