VQR Online

Revisiting Steinbeck’s California.

Heavy blue veins streak across my mother’s legs,
Some of them bunched up into dark lumps at her ankles.

We lift our glasses to the river that has been for a very long time not a river, the river that is reenchanting Los Angeles, the river that will soon power an enormous waterwheel, which will turn right here where we are standing.

What was the heart of her story,
tired, on their bicycles, night

coming on while they tried to reach
Lago di Balseno, the farmer,

The mind 
likes the squeeze 
of chutes and channels.

The scrutiny to which South Africa is incessantly exposed is a search for answers to two sets of questions. The questions are complex. Therefore the answers are complex and controversial. Even the choice of answers is constantly influenced...