In the Orion winter 2025/2026 issue dedicated to cryptids, Katherine Cusumano dives into the mythology of New York City’s Gowanus Canal, one of the most toxic waterways in the US. The canal is a Superfund site of mutant monsters, sentient slime, and poisonous sludge, and yet Cusumano reimagines it as a place of possibility and transformation.
In one way, the story of the three-eyed catfish possessed a strange optimism, evidence of our desire for the natural world to persist in spite of the human capacity for environmental destruction. Whether or not the fish was real wasn’t even the point. The point was the wanting to believe in the canal as a place of possibility—a story New York is famous for telling about itself, though perhaps not normally about its toxic waste sites. If animal bodies could transmute, then there might be a chance for all of us to be made new.
More picks from Orion
Why Are Fish So Gay?
“A conversation about finding community in the aquatic.”
How Our Grandmothers Made Us and Saved Us
“What evolution owes aging women.”
Lord God Bird
“Does the ivory-billed woodpecker still exist?”
The Rhythms of “Rock Creek Park”
“The Blackbyrds’ ode to DC inspired a new generation of artists.”
Greyhound
“Geography, capitalism, and America by bus.”
Intuitive Eating
“On poison, pleasure, and trust.”
