Materials for making a death mask:one handful alginatesufficient tap waterplaster bandageshalf a bedsheet, tornone plastic garbage bag, torna good pound of beeswaxTools: one large bowl, a long-handled spoon, a single-burner stove, a saucepan, . . .
Liu Yiduo points to the lever at the foot of the bed and says to me, Crank this six times to make it recline and he’ll be able to drink. Twelve times to sit upright, and if he starts to . . .
1.
Apartment blocks built in the 1980s have left strange blank spaces in East German cities, particularly Berlin. There are many unsightly gaps from one house to the next, especially between Wilhelminian and communist buildings. These gaps, which I call . . .
A lot of life is left in the man being killed.He does not at first foresee the end. He knows, of course, that anything can happen. When it begins, his only worry is that he will be unable to work. . . .
Night, Maracas–St. Joseph, Trinidad, 2019
In 2014, I walked the streets of Roseau, the capital of Dominica. I roamed like a lost mariner in the ebbs and flows of people caught up in the business of living. I’ve been meaning . . .
Poetry is rarely admitted to the club called African literature. If pressed, well-read Africans might cite Dennis Brutus, Christopher Okigbo, and Okot p’Bitek as contemporaries of Chinua Achebe and Ngugi wa Thiong’o. But when African literature is invoked—in Africa and . . .
