A disappeared lake, a sinking city. Diego Gerard Morrison’s new book Upflow: Fictions (out October 27 from Split/Lip Press) shows that neither phrase is metaphorical as he dissects Mexico City’s water system, the “costliest and most absurd on the planet.” Upflow follows the path of water in and out of Mexico City through an array of humorous, picaresque, and hydro-ethnological stories.
A rotating cast shares their vantage points across the slim 166 pages, ranging from a teen who wants to play Jesus in his town’s Holy Week parade, to a journalist interviewing the man who unclogs the city’s pipes, to water itself. The fictions skip between time and place, from the 1800s to the near future, from an earthquake carnival to the Sierra Nevadas. Upflow is informative and entrancing, dipping into the untranslatable: A page and a half of expressive punctuation marks is rainfall interrupting a human conversation.
Upflow begins in the sky over the Gulf of Mexico and ends in a farm in the Mezquital Valley. Our final guide is Don Benigno who harvests his produce next to the Endho Dam, “the former home of ducks and swans that has become the largest open-sky septic pit.” Lettuce is irrigated by the “black water” that government agencies swear is clean and treated. Benigno watches as his greens packed in bags “boasting fictions like organic” speed off to Mexico City. He philosophizes about the circularity of the valley that no one can escape: “Its water, past and present, ouroboric, comes back to haunt it.”
Devin Kate Pope is a freelance writer based in Phoenix who publishes a semi-weekly newsletter about food, politics, climate, and culture. Her writing has appeared in BOMB, Orion, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Devin also runs Kindred Word Studio, editing manuscripts, newsletters, and more, and consulting on content strategy for writers and artists.
