Poetry

In the morning we found
40 acres of oaks
torn to the ground.

And for his human guests, imperial excess straining
all credulity: say a nightingale embalmed in honey
and stuffed in a swan […]

The Plat Book

cast our farm
and neighbors’
farms as flat […]

We dug potatoes from their cabinets of soil, watched
the belly of the earth turn over in its grave, a glimpse of flesh
through darkening ground, roots and greenlings—then the plow.

If it doesn’t rhyme, it’s not poetry? Quick, somebody tell Shakespeare.

Two VQR contributors are interviewed for “American Experience.”

You were afraid to open, but when you did,

There she was asking to borrow a candle. 

If this were a novel,
it would begin with a character,
a man alone on a southbound train

I remember when my body
was a friend,

when sleep like a good dog
came when summoned.

Well, here we are again, old friend, Ancient of Days,

Eyeball to eyeball.