Unfinished Blues For The Astronaut's Picture Of Philly From Space
BY JOEY SWEENEY
We like that Philadelphia, when viewed from the cosmos, has the color and texture of dirt when you hold it in your hand or, more appropriately, when you’re spitting out/brushing off dirt as you get up after being knocked down. It is a familiar tactile experience. You know it now, and you will know it again.
We like that the connecting rivers offer up the shape of the main of the city — our beautiful grid, our birthright of Penn’s greene country towne — as alternately a scrotum or a teardrop.
The left hand side of the city would seem to be yelling at someone.
The shadows of skyscrapers peppering the cranium are absolutely demure, as if to say, It doesn’t all happen here. In fact, if you must know, hardly any of it does.
The north side explodes out of said cranium, as if to suggest the madness of North Philadelphia, the insanity of Fishtown and Northern Liberties.
The rivers aren’t blue, or black; they’re almost the color of dried blood, and the various bridges seem to suggest that the only way is in, not out.
I can see my house, but only just.
