Theme 07: "Bright Lights, Dark City"
Pam Avoledo, Terry Brinkman, Sam Casey, Angel Cetorelli, Sarah Das Gupta, Melissa Feuerstein, Tim Frank, Alan Hardy, Jer Hayes, Scott Holstad, Erin Jamieson, Stephen Leach, Edward Lee, Sia Mehta, Tamara Pantović, Fred Ragsdale, Samantha Ratcliffe, Thomas Riesner, Gerard Sarnat, Layla Sabourian-Tarwe, Topher Shields, Scout Taylor, Foy Timms, Douglas Twells, Pradeep R. Varadwaj, Michael Worthington, and Saba Zahoor
Three Poems
Poetry by Jer Hayes
“Look at those fuckers down there, / they'd kick you out of the way / and not even look at you, / the fuckers.”
Five Poems
by Sarah Das Gupta
“A blindman sits outside a burger joint / Feeling for coins so casually thrown / A woman with bulging plastic bags / Squats on cardboard, muddy with footprints / Of passersby who go on passing / Without once looking or stopping”
Where Nothing Answers
Poetry by Pradeep R. Varadwaj
“Winter arrives like the hush of ash. / Each morning I cross the narrow streets / from dormitory to university, / past leaves thinned to parchment on the frost— / gold loosening its grip, brown folding in.”
The Suitcase Project
Digital Art by Michael Worthington
“The idea with The Suitcase is that sadness is an emotion we experience but try to hide behind a facade.”
Digital Art by Thomas Riesner
Common Wealth
by Samantha Ratcliffe
“Implausible hands pluck the stars with such intent / as if she’s working against a lost pasture of dandelion / or lightning bugs only she can see…”
![CITY [E]SCAPES](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/633d13b5059b11062335025e/1775843677871-3NKPUFP9UTINBC1Y1DOA/fisheye+apartment.jpeg)
CITY [E]SCAPES
by Gerard Sarnat
“poverty porn — / sofa surfing— stale / bread, butter /entire livelihood / in shopping bag — down / to three potatoes a day…”
Mashhad
by Layla Sabourian-Tarwe
“Smoke has turned the morning / into a rumor of night. / Some cities wake to sunlight. / Mashhad wakes to sirens / and a sky the color of burned paper.”
Year's End on the Leamouth
Poetry by Stephen Leach
“Kings dress as pedlars, / Nameless strangers beckon, sly, rank injustice pools / Like foul black water: / You brushed the drops from your skin.”
Floyd and the Humans
Fiction by Scott Taylor
“floyd went forth, sliding on his belly. he was a reptile of the most servile and cringeworthy sort, a serpent of snakelike proportions. from the beginning his life on planet earth had consisted of ground-slithering and bottom-feeding and naught else, it had always been thus and always would be…”
Memory Guide
Poetry by Alan Hardy
“We follow her / through murky streets, / obscured figures flitting by…./ …we emerge from her past, / the journeys she made / with nobody by her side.
Blip’s Break
by Angel Cetorelli
“He surveyed the creatures flitting around him. Ara, Marcus-with-the-face-tattoo, that girl he used to buy coke from whose name he’d long forgotten, strangers he might never speak a word to or see again but could bare his soul to with the expression on his face and the movement of his body.”
Six Poems
by Sam Casey
“Wine stained lips linger longer on the lovers' / Quarrel as night descends into dusk, / Clarity's tatters dissipating and Passion's poison / Seeping into blood once hot with unbridled love.”
Each Night Is New Again
by Pam Avoledo
“There’s a 24 hour diner open and we slid into the round seats, facing the street. The drag queen, Aurelia Summer, her golden hoop earrings still on, waves at us and drinks her coffee.”
Neon Saints, K Road
by Topher Shields
“A boy leans in a doorway / offering nothing named— / just the pause…”
Five Poems
Poetry by Tamara Pantović
“I wear a sign on my forehead, / a wanderer between worlds, / child of dark abysses, / the king and his madwoman, / unfaithful in pain and happiness / persevering in suffering, / minds poisoned by doubt…”
My Barrio
Poetry by Melissa Feuerstein
“I walk with aims through my barrio, a small universe of blocks and faces, where love is supposed to be true and no is not failure, just what happens.”
Between Dialects
by Saba Zahoor
“The city speaks to me / switching between dialects, / words borrowed from / Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit; / each syllable reiterating my displacement.”
Two Poems
by Erin Jamieson
“the haunted / howling of dogs / always stirred / something / inside of me / as if I / could not leave them…”
Six Poems
by Scott Holstad
“A meth lab had blown up / just three doors down… / …they / taped off the block / with their garish yellow / police tape, we watched / the white fumes drifting / in the air”