very new york
This is a great catalogue of details about what can happen to a NY tree. It's the language that throws me off. It just doesn't sound New York and misses some opportunities.
"Cur" is a country word; New Yorkers have mutts (cf. Winger's speech on everyone in his platoon being mutts in "Stripes"). "Daily whipped offense of bike chain lacerations" just goes on forever and wants to do too much; scars from bike chains, maybe by the Chinese delivery guys, would suit. "Gall" as a verb is correctly used grammatically, but in NYC "gall" is an attitude, as in someone "has the gall to." "Box-cutter boys" sounds like a phrase dropped from "Newsies." If he's referring to scratchiti, there has to be a better way to get at it, maybe by noting what's cut into the tree. "The burning road-salt I.V. drip of winter" is another overlong metaphor which makes no sense: NY plows the streets, and if it bothered to salt Avenue D, home of many projects the salt would never reach the trees on the sidewalks because the parked cars would be in the way.
I will give the author the dumped grease, the bags caught in the branches and the broken limbs from trucks. Those are NY.
Better title: "These Two F'n Trees on Avenue D."
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