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”

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.”

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…”

by Gerard Sarnat

“poverty porn — / sofa surfing— stale / bread, butter /entire livelihood / in shopping bag — down / to three potatoes a day…”

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.”

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.”

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.

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.”

by Topher Shields

“A boy leans in a doorway / offering nothing named— / just the pause…”

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…”

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.”

by Saba Zahoor

“The city speaks to me / switching between dialects, / words borrowed from / Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit; / each syllable reiterating my displacement.”

by Erin Jamieson

“the haunted / howling of dogs / always stirred / something / inside of me / as if I / could not leave them…”

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”

by Fred Ragsdale

“Beneath the blind cut-out / of an afternoon spent / in misdirection, / a retro-reflection / kicks sideways / off a tricycle / tossed haphazardly / between a rosemary bush / and a leafless acacia tree.”

by Foy Timms

“Beneath the sober geography of the night, / boy-men stalk a scavenger feast, / beyond civilisation and trust.”

Poetry by Tim Frank

“There’s a man / Treading inner city tracks / And darkened underpasses, / Creeping towards his fate.”

by Douglas Twells

“Creeping trains in downtown Seattle / sound soft horns at 3:00 a.m. / They serenade insomniacs - travelers / who stir in their rooms in the Alaska Building.”