Dead Horse ... Bay

The Journal of Radical Wonder

Dead Horse Bay is the sort of isolated place Tony Soprano might want to uh let’s say, recycle the occasional odds and ends, bibs and Bobs.

The place is literally a dump. Back in the1950s, a topsoil cap burst off a landfill and has leaked what some would call “treasures” every since.

Located off Barren Island in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, Dead Horse Bay is so named for long ago dumping of carcasses from horse rendering plants.

Read more about the grim history “Dead Horse Bay: Polluted and Disgusting, but People Can’t Stay Away” (March 17, 2025) here.

Can’t stay away types include anyone with curiosity wearing a good pair of boots.

As noted by Archaeology Magazine, New York City’s Dirtiest Beach :

“ … Dead Horse Bay would be a perfect place for a Hollywood prop master to visit, one tasked with re-creating the interior of a 1950s New York apartment. People’s homes and lives can be pieced back together through the veritable graveyard of objects here. There are food and drink containers, cleaning supplies, even small kitchen appliances. There are children’s belongings such as toy soldiers, dolls, and roller skates. There are work-related items such as leather boots, hammers, and saw blades, and hygiene products such as deodorant canisters, toothbrushes, and combs. There are even parts of the buildings themselves—architectural elements, bricks, tile flooring, and door lintels.”

At this writing, the National Park Service has closed the entire southern area of Dead Horse Bay to the public due to “ … chemical contamination and radium bearing items …” .

My micro, “Dead Horse” was initially published online by The Journal of Radical Wonder (7/7/2022) and given new life as part of the Flash Flood on National Flash Fiction Day, June 15, 2024 @18:40 (BST).

I couldn’t stay away.

Photo by Sheree Shatsky (2013)

Dead Horse

The past litters the beach. All vintage, my dad tells me, busted free from a long ago landfill. Take anything you want. I’m buying, he jokes.

Thick white cold cream jars. Leather shoes. Baby shoes. Plastic baby doll legs. A long silenced New Year’s Eve noisemaker, 1945. Half a soup bowl from a diner called Fran’s.

I pick up a clouded glass spice shaker embossed with a “P”. Salt, it smells of salt, of moist flour and yeast. I search the scatter for its top and find a tiny toy mouse, minus an ear. Seaweed plugs the other.

A guy fishes knee deep in the bay. My dad shouts, “What’s running?”

I think, maybe swordtail is not, like my dead tropical fish Henri my dad flushed down the toilet this morning. The half the cat didn’t eat.

The fisherman calls back, “Walleye!” Henri eyes nothing but cat guts now.

“I’d rather eat a dead hedgehog than anything out of that water,” my dad yells, pleased with his local banter.

We meander the exploded trash bag of a beach and stop at what remains of the old slaughterhouse. All those dead horses. I kick an ivory bone out of the sand.

The tideline is choked with horseshoe crabs, all tagged. With a number. Someone cares. Me and my dad, we pick our way past and don’t talk about Henri. Chunky bottles hang from a spiky tree. A couple catch the rain, others the sun.

***

Ozzy. We will miss you.