Tag: spring 2021

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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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slush

new york cold street

By Marina Sage Carlstroem

I pulled back my curtain, trying to escape from the blank, bright screen in front of me. Outside the window, I found only more whiteness: smooth blankets of powder coated the steps on fire escape ladders, cars sloshed through puddles of sleet. The grating rhythm of a metal shovel meeting concrete sidewalk only distracted me further from the work at hand. Try as I might to blame the gathering storm for my avoidance, I hadn’t gotten much of anything done since I’d moved just a few blocks from Oliver.

 

Almost a year earlier, we’d found ourselves nestled into the corner of the dining hall after our freshman seminar, arguing about Plato over plates of waffle fries. He’d left the table and come back with coffees in both hands—black for him, ice and oat milk for me— I tried to hide my grin behind my cup, surprised that he’d recalled my usual from a hum-drum class ice-breaker. I joked about delegating people into factions based on La Croix flavor preferences, but he’d never heard of them. His lack of a clear British accent masked his ignorance of American culture, but its cadence lingered in his speech, soothing and playful. He spoke softly but not without confidence, like every phrase was an important secret; eyes widening and narrowing like someone trying to get the perfect focus through a camera lens, never leaving my own. Our plates lay stacked and bare on the table as the lunch rush turned to dinner, and we traded playlists, childhood photos, and google map renditions of our homes. I woke up 10 minutes earlier the next Tuesday morning, unsure if I was embarrassed to be putting on mascara for class or excited to have a reason to.

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Filling Empty Shelves

grocery store shelf

By Jared Skoro 

A Search for Normalcy

It was a year ago when I was last in New York. The memories I had of the City at the start of the pandemic were not ones too unfamiliar to all of us: I was squished in a Trader Joe’s. Why was I there? I never shop at a Trader Joe’s. I wasn’t there to shop or stock up, so there was no good reason for being there. Perhaps in the chaos of newly masked shoppers zipping through the aisles, the screaming and hissing of the shopping cart wheels as they darted from one empty shelf to another, directed like car traffic by tired, worn employees; I was there in search of normalcy. I would be returning to Texas soon, and all the hum and buzz of what was the City, with its colorful characters and architecture, would retreat into memory and perhaps never be seen again. This could be the last taste of what was New York. I remember writing about this moment a month later to try to understand this feeling I had, but all that came up was one word, Souviens, a very gustatory swallowing sort of word in French. Souviens. Remember.

When I returned to Texas, classes for the spring semester ended and the chaos in supermarkets still reigned. I decided to work at one until I could return to New York. I didn’t do it for some sentimental recollection wherein by being in a supermarket, I could harken back to that time where I stood in one in New York, desperately clinging to a normalcy that could never be had. That would be stupid. I only did it because it was one of the few places where I could work overnight and not talk to anyone, not get sick while on the job, and not deal with any customers. So, an overnight job at the supermarket was perfect, just listen to music on my earbuds, go into some aisle, and stock empty shelves until daylight. I applied at one nearby and easily got the job. When I went for an interview, the pay they offered was good despite still being Texas wages, and the work seemed manageable, so with everything lined up, I began working within the week. Continue reading “Filling Empty Shelves”

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