Sad City by Craig Kite

"Taking aim at the foibles and quirks of our society, Kite uses our canned language to show us caught in the crosshairs of our own quotidian idiosyncrasies. There’s much affection and humor mixed in with the wry, tongue-in-cheek irony, and an overall playful bounce keeps it lively. From the Save-Mart to Ecclesiastes, Kite leaves no corner of our so-called civilization unexamined—a delightful and rollicking read."

— Cole Swensen


"The collection is at once comical and poignant, alienating and resonating, apocalyptic and ordinary—paradoxes wherein lie its beauty."

— Javeria Hasnain


Sad City by Craig Kite is a paean to the underdog protagonist-speaker and the working class New Yorkers. They reside in the best city in the best country of this best world where the anchorman “all sound like… / plastic Kens and Barbies/ trying to sell me…/ the myth/ that being rich means one is smart.” The speaker “eat[s] quino in a New York City gym,” watches the uber rich funding “nonprofits” that pay “working class people/ minimum wage” “to fix problems/ that really rich people / created.” “Between jobs,” the poet remembers that he “make[s] things for a living.” “Aren’t thoughts things, I think they are.” The speaker “dreams/ that home is a place/ where he is accepted and safe,” even when he hears the “ambient music coming from [his] wrists” telling him “it’s time to leave.” I respect the resilience of the speaker, who is entrenched in the gig economy delivering to the top of a glamorous skyscraper only to receive no tips, and who imagines himself as “a useless/ plastic grocery bag/ under [his] kitchen sink.” In a city that tells you to “say something” when you “see something” but to “shut the fuck up” if you “feel something,” Kite’s speaker points to not to the neon nights of a city that never sleeps but at how the “moon is a piece of tinsel/ in [his] eye.”

— Tiffany Troy, author of Dominus



Craig Kite is a poet, musician and actor from New York City with a background in journalism and human rights activism. He led field teams in Iraq 2008-2009 working to expose war crimes against indigenous Kurdish populations, and earlier in Canada to protect Algonquin territory from uranium mining. He has also worked in Chiapas, Mexico with the Zapatistas, as well as projects in New Orleans post-hurricane Katrina, and the Rocky Mountains on wildfire prevention. He was a co-founder and editor of Mad Gleam Press (2015-2020) and ran a book shop / event space in Brooklyn during that time. After surviving multiple surgeries for injuries from construction work, he currently teaches guitar and works as a doorman at a speakeasy in New York, and records music with his band Pinko, for which he is the lead guitarist and songwriter. His darkly comedic and philosophical poems are social commentaries inspired by these experiences, his struggle to navigate social systems, and surviving in the city.



Book Information:

· Paperback: 104 pages

· Binding: Perfect-Bound

· Publisher: BlazeVOX [books] 

· ISBN: 978-1-60964-523-6

$18