text and photography: katie beth
Waking up. A siren. A grin. "Guess what? We're in New York City." A prayer. "Lord be with them," a constant echo in the city that's never still.
Walking, the sidewalk stretched out in broken trapezoids, crumbling at the edge. The brownstones all stand one after the other, their elbows linked as they have always been. Angles and iron-bar-motifs snap into relief in the stark light defused by high haze.
The little coffee shop we found just when we couldn't feel our fingers anymore. A small door hidden away. We thought it was a factory until we caught the word "coffee" after gazing at the sparse sign for a while. Warmth and our pen ink stretching out over the pages. English breakfast steaming in our hands, watching the lanky twenty-something slice the zucchini and onion behind the glass and around the corner. Matte black walls and dusty grey wood. Green rubbery leaves overflowing their tiny orange pots. The warm tea sinks deep into my gut, lifting the contentment up to where I can grab it.
We grabbed hold of the subway railings, testing our new-moving weight through the tension in our wrists. No need to know where it was going, just going.
Chase T. Mitchell, 1950 up on the subway wall. "Whenever I look // out at the snowy // mountains at this hour // and speak directly // into the ear of the sky, // it's you I'm thinking of."
Gazing out the windows and watching the windows go by. Crooked books and air-conditioners, awnings and a multitude of grating patterns. Squares, arches, keystones and carvings. Curtains tied and twisted Venetian blinds. Bricks, cracks, plaster and vines. Drips of tar that meander down from the roof. Yellow and red tea bags strewn across the windowsill.
Barbed-wire curls along the tops of already snarled fences.
Everywhere you look you see people keeping away from each other; benches with rungs between each seat. In the graveyard too, vast and patterned with lives and curves and grey humps of leaves stretching out under us.
So much human expression in every nook and clammy corner, every postage-stamp yard, every roof plastered in words words words. So many suppressed screams. So many desperately wanting to say something and be heard...to leave something that will last. So many that the stacks and stacks of screams are painted one on top of the other, almost beautiful in their kaleidoscope of passionate plea. Here's the end of the line. Go back again. Twenty stops to Manhattan if we just sit still.
Chase T. Mitchell, 1950 up on the subway wall. "Whenever I look // out at the snowy // mountains at this hour // and speak directly // into the ear of the sky, // it's you I'm thinking of."
Gazing out the windows and watching the windows go by. Crooked books and air-conditioners, awnings and a multitude of grating patterns. Squares, arches, keystones and carvings. Curtains tied and twisted Venetian blinds. Bricks, cracks, plaster and vines. Drips of tar that meander down from the roof. Yellow and red tea bags strewn across the windowsill.
Barbed-wire curls along the tops of already snarled fences.
Everywhere you look you see people keeping away from each other; benches with rungs between each seat. In the graveyard too, vast and patterned with lives and curves and grey humps of leaves stretching out under us.
So much human expression in every nook and clammy corner, every postage-stamp yard, every roof plastered in words words words. So many suppressed screams. So many desperately wanting to say something and be heard...to leave something that will last. So many that the stacks and stacks of screams are painted one on top of the other, almost beautiful in their kaleidoscope of passionate plea. Here's the end of the line. Go back again. Twenty stops to Manhattan if we just sit still.
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