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17 Melbourne Road

Oliver Reynolds

‘A room at the top of the street / preserving his life in sunlight’

6 March 1989

Salman Rushdie

‘Damn, brother. You saw what they did to my face? / Poked out my eyes. Knocked teeth out of place’.

A Description of the Architectural Impact of My Home, Age 7

Saïd Sayrafiezadeh

‘my apartment is neither over / nor under the sidewalk, / but both at once’

A Sharing Economy

Karen Solie

‘The Paying Guest rises in the middle of the night / to turn off the radio where no radio exists’

Abingdon Square Park

Rowan Ricardo Phillips

‘I once had had a thought / About a thought I once had had.’

Beyond Sunset

Mary Ruefle

‘Red sadness never appears sad . . . it appears in flashes of passion, anger, fear, inspiration and courage, in dark unsellable visions; it is an upside down penny concealed beneath a tea cosy.’

Bird of Fire

Rowan Ricardo Phillips

‘No more, no longer the sweet difference / Between real and dream I knew.’

Bob

Jana Prikryl

‘he cut out small talk / not hearing it, convincingly deaf to its nothing’

Citizen

Claudia Rankine

‘Certain moments send adrenaline to the heart, dry out the tongue’

Civilization Spurns the Leopard

Solmaz Sharif

‘To step out of my door and hope to see something like a life, something passably me.’

Comic Timing

Holly Pester

‘I went to Ilford alone / was handed a white laminated square’

Coming Night

James Schuyler

‘what did you think of, / how long did you wait’

crown

Danez Smith

‘the boy claps me between / his hands & i break apart like glitter’