I open the window                see electricity                bleach the sky in far off codes of silence. The air is static                pent with heat.                I lie watching the curtains light up in morse as if a lighthouse dashes out rays    […]

Jane Burden, his raven-haired lover stepping out of her curvilinear drapery is a naked model for Ecce Ancilla Domini. To study nature attentively: the abiding axiom. It is de rigueur: camera-like accuracy for a pink carnation lying on an open book, a collared dove or the opium poppy for Beata Beatrix, and, when he can’t […]

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   after Charles Bukowski’s ‘Bluebird’ there’s a jackdaw in my head she’s in charge of the dark matter calls the shots from the back room light bulb swinging above her desk I hear her typing late at night the quiet genius that stays behind. now and then she pokes her beak through the trapdoor of […]

Mondays, washing days, heaving sheets from one tub through the mangle into another tub on a wooden stand. Hands placing them, spacing them on a plastic line. This is street art where the westerly wind coming in from the beach takes the plumes from the iron works’ chimneys, lets them pass through this small town […]

Rwanda, April 1994 The red dust road opens out to a schoolhouse where banana trees spread purple flowers unfurling sunlight, ready to fruit. In rough-cut classrooms the Hutu children sing praises to Imana under orders. The Tutsi children have been sent outside and stare in silence beyond the yard through pink angel-trumpets and yellow mimosas […]