Cities & Urban Life

"A car" "awash with blood" "Blood at our feet" "& I
& others" "have small springs" "of blood from our…

Morning in the city and the performance
that is Madison Avenue wearing diamond
studs for breakfast, my…

Mike Sonksen on the Los Angeles fires and what it means to love a city in danger.

Caleb Femi on parties, golden pavements, and the downside of self-awareness. 

It's a rush, a sploosh of sewage, twenty thousand cubic metres being pumped in, stirred and settled …

Why do people always choose saturdays
to wig out
I mean the ones who scream leave me alone
i hate your…

i am new york city
here is my brain of hot sauce
my tobacco teeth my
     mattress of  bedbug tongue
legs…

The city lies back in its winding-sheet
While little digits drum a steady beat

On roofs and terraces, …

And when, in the city in which I love you,
even my most excellent song goes unanswered,
and I mount the…

I had taken him to his mother
and was returning along the D8.
In the breakdown lane several cars, and …

& Memphis is out in Full Fang!
Skeletons skip down our pitted streets.
Whole families with matching hobo stipple
roam tragicomically through the sprawling
candy deserts: polka-dot bandanas
on sticks, flapping Chaplinesque shoes.

Unclaimed pumpkins pile high
behind razor wire. The air's thick
with caw & trouble. Our...

Idra Novey on exile, stereotypes, and making art the center of your life.

When relatives came from out of town,
we would drive down to Blackbottom,
drive slowly down the congested…

dort, wo die stadt versickert,
beim bahndamm, jenseits der in ihrer pracht
erstarrten, riesigen zikade
des umspannwerkes, siehst du sie: gebraucht,
getürmt, ein ganzes feld, gezackt
oder gewellt die maserung in jedem bauch

und dunkler als sämtliche rembrandts
zusammen: gummiakropolis,
heiligtum des banalen—im herbst berennt es
der sturm, erduldet...

where the city starts to come undone,
at the railroad embankment, beyond the staunch
colossal cicada of the substation
in its splendor, you start to notice:
used up, towering, a field of them, worn
or rippled texture in each paunch

and smokier than all the rembrandts
put...