VQR Online

Tenderest pendulum,
     Your slender stem is
          Tremulous as it enters
               The minute’s fundamental;

As the scroll unrolls, scales
Ripple by the glass like fishes
Flashing gaseous tails,

Butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth,
That wide wet kisser we
Smacked on to justify a pipe.

I am a field.
I am a blade of grass
Within the field.

“My mother lit me (father was her match)
And set me in a draught to catch my breath.

For many people today the CIA is a three-letter symbol for practices reviled with four-letter words. In­ deed, in some circles, writing about the Central Intelligence Agency has become an exercise in political pornography: the subject...

The birth and longevity of a great University, “based,” as the founder of the University of Virginia said, “on the illimitable freedom of the human mind,” would be a cause for celebration under any circumstances. The celebration is...

I didn’t know I would see the cat when I went out for the milk. I didn’t know that the milk box had frozen during the night and there were broken icicles scattered around it like splintered glass. 

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I didn’t have a happy childhood. It was miserable. I had a father who was never home, a mother who read True Detective magazines, and an older sister who was a born leader.