Peter Sorrell

What a beautiful world it was once. At least a river of it was.

[psorrell]

the winter of your dying I didnt have a lot of time to think about it, trying to stay alive - Franz Wright, "Fathers" (2003)

NPL. 7.11.44.

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Crouse. 7.2.26 & 7.7.26.

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Old and new and again. 7.1.26.

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Gemmies. 7.1.26.

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Marshall Lake, 5:18 am. 7.1.26.

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Loyalhanna Dam. 6.19.26.

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Is. This. A. God. Damn? (Loyalhanna Dam. 6.18.26)

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Whisky Rebellion. 6.15, 6.16, 6.17.26.

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Deer Creek, The Other. 5.8.26.

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From beneath you, it devours. 5.7.26.

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Connoquenessing, upstream; Deer Creek off Emmerling; over Lower Whitey Soergel ballfield: 5.3-4.26.

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5.1.26.

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4.29.26.

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"In 1905, after years of intense argument concerning the design of the plant, construction began on a slow-sand filtration plant at the site of the present treatment plant on the Allegheny River near Aspinwall" (https://www.pgh2o.com/about-us/mission-vision-and-core-values/our-history). 4.25.26

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Hell Run, Hell's Hollow Falls, & Slippery Crockn Creek off of Eckert Bridge. 4.23.26.

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The fox watched me build my Pittsburgh again and again. - Jack Gilbert, "Searching for Pittsburgh" (1994).

4.13.26.

[psorrell]

James Allen Hall, "Pittsburgh" (2013) I burn your Highland Park. I acid your Carnegie car dealerships. Your Squirrel Hill, sheer terror in winter. But most of all, I hate your Liberty Avenue, the last place, one night, I saw my closest friend saying, Wait here, outside the after-hours club. I wait, hating your Strip, half your Shadyside, all of Bloomfield, the bluffs and flats where my friend trades himself. I wait hours, then trace your Mexican War Streets looking for his car, so I could declare a truce in the battle he was fighting against himself. Your Hot Metal, your Fort Pitt Bridge that leads headfirst into the Monongahela. In the morning, he's home. He cannot tell me where it hurts. I help him shower off the Duquesne residue, the priesting old world shame. Pittsburgh, you're all grit and gristle turning crystal track marks, turning a man meth mouth. I feed him, put him to bed. I'll keep watch tonight in a cable car ascending Mt. Washington, your smokestacks blowing clouds over the confluence until all you are, Pittsburgh, is a sleepless shimmer I will watch diminish down to the savaged seed of morning, as impossible to watch as you are to name.