A Dark Room Facing East

[wasellajam]

Hi, Stan. After time and multiples reads I'm pretty much where I started with this. It strikes me as an ekphrastic poem, the N an observer rather than a participant. Some notes:

A Dark Room Facing East 


A skylight lets flashes through,
the fan shuttering a thin shaft
on 35 mm sheets. Dark room vs darkroom, the word play is lovely here: skylight, flashes, shuttering, sheets
Scorched chair legs
smear faint ash shadows 
to the rod-base, which smelts
a pitch gash from the covers. These three lines are overkill for me, how many ways can we say shades of dark. And I can't get "rod-base".
In the heat, blades gather
under their wings
what shows in cracks: Interesting image and phrasing, made me work a bit for it.
The man’s face made up
of the strain he was mothering. Ah, a human. "strain he was mothering" leaves the poem open-ended. It sets my mind wandering, a good thing,

Thanks for posting, I enjoyed the read.