Glass City vs. Bottle Beach
I once went to a New Year’s Eve party whose host, a burlesque dancer, handed each
guest a dinner plate to smash against a brick wall. I’ve never seen a roomful of
people so suddenly awake, so reborn. Of course that was years ago, before we lost
Brooklyn, before they came for Queens.
This city has a habit of killing its ghosts, but it hasn’t kept up with your haunting.
Even the water hasn’t managed to turn your bottles back to sand.
Patti Smith protect us. Richard Hell forgive us. Lou Reed let us never forget your
ripped nylons, your drunken plans, how you woke up every morning to eviscerate
horses to bone. We want to know how you failed or succeeded at surviving
whatever your life was. But even now, I don’t. All I can do is stab at truth,
waving a bottle, letting it fly, waiting for the head-
clearing satisfaction of hearing it break.
Because we don’t fear wilderness but its opposite: the stripping of secrets, the bleaching of bones, the relentless building of buildings.
Because we don’t fear Batman but Bruce Wayne: champagne, handshake, deals
behind closed doors.
Warriors, come out to play. Bring back a little reckless to this brave new city.
We’ve made it to the beach before you. We’re hiding in plain sight, magnified.
So slow they can’t see us, so low they’d never dream of our iridescence. But we are
always here, always inching, always covering ground. We are scrolled messages,
signs, and you will come to read us.
Object
Body of Water
About the Artist
Julia LoFaso's writing has appeared in McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Conjunctions, and The Southeast Review, among other publications. One of her stories was a finalist in The Southeast Review's 2013 World's Best Short-Short Story Contest. She has an MFA from Columbia University and lives in Queens.