Rindon Johnson & Jonathan Durham

Noon, October 5th, 1950. A reinforced concrete sewer exploded in Greenpoint, blowing manhole covers three stories high, shattering windows, injuring three persons, and ripping open a ten foot section of pavement at the intersection of Manhattan Ave and Huron Street. Gasoline leaking from at least one of the area’s many oil refineries had seeped into the city’s plumbing and ignited. Oil continued to leak for three more decades, until a Coast Guard helicopter flying over Newtown Creek noticed an oil slick flowing out of a bulkhead near Meeker Avenue.

Captain Fleischell:

A benzene rose

Wheezing, watery, stretching out

Soap-crete, sprawling rainbow, reporting

from above

A wake of worse-than-rot

Blight, bluntly speaking, poison

Petro-Chemical Association:

No admissions, son.

Is it better to be inflicted and convalescing

Or sick to death without knowing it?

Symptoms? Sediment drag vapors, vacuum enhanced recovery, or

swallow down bile at business meetings?

Astral oil, global family