“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.”