“If I lend you a letter w, you must return that same letter w, the oman in the bookshop said.”

“The one thing she never felt while she was dreaming, she thought, was suspicion that she was in a dream.”

“Octavian sat there with winter in his eyes, calculating, controlling the narrative.”

“Nothing soars here /
but flies under the radar, obscured.”

“With a final burst of brilliance, the sun falls missile-like to the point where the sky ends and life begins.”

“The eagle, burnished brown,
/ golden, / his beak and the arch /
of his regal neck somehow in tune”

“‘The money first. Please,’ she said.”

“He describes the persimmon tree as an equilibrium of weight and colour, a tree Gauguin would have liked.”

“Unburied heads poke above the paste as / Two childhoods sit in either corner of the cab.”

“Now Mr. Walter, I know you have to use the words available to you, but that one wasn’t really timed to please.”

“She led me into a copse, / All around was ochre.”

“As the little girl and her mother passed by, the animals went through the motions of confinement.”

“Streetlights smudge the walls with amber.”