Poetry

In the alluvium of
the hot afternoon,
where the day’s clarities […]

At the lower fence line under the stars
he hears what at first he takes
to be the neighbor’s mare come
to investigate his apple pocket […]

Ruin

was rumored

to be rooming

up the road
where

a neighbor’s barn’d
burned down.

The forecast had not predicted it,
and its beginning, a calming, rumbled dusk

and pleasant lightning, she welcomed as harbinger

With a squeal, the already
otherworldly broadcast
stuttered,
scattered,
leaving
only a tattered hiss.

In the patient, quiet museum, she is exhibited
closed, indehiscent inside a glass casket,

reclining on her back, on hair long as her spine.

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 […]

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

Two VQR contributors are interviewed for “American Experience.”