VQR Online

Metrophobia
I, too dislike it, or at least I find
too much of it bromidic and unrhymed,

The plane landed in Fort Lauderdale and Dick and Royce (Royal) were picked up by a pretty young woman wearing a tank top, shorts, and silver antlers and driven to Hertz. Royal’s brother Brandt arranged such things—or his secretary Jacki did...

Above me in the night
My unknown neighbors walk 
Across a creaking floor

Finding out the truth about beekeeping and locally made honey.

As soon as I began to ask questions, I realized how much work had gone into no longer asking them, into silences or re-​routings, into omissions, not-​noticings—​into a carefully pruned rhetoric of absence. When I began to realize I wanted...

John, you asked me what it was like to be black,
to come from a place where being black mattered.

You flared across Boston
like a meteor, blond mane and lowered brow
in every coffeehouse off the Charles.

So much of what forms us is accidental, ephemeral-​seeming. When I was young I knew I wanted to be an artist. Sometimes I wanted to be a writer, too, and make books; sometimes I wanted to be a singer. 

The town, my dear, is closing down: dead-
Bolts slipping into their sleeves, cicadas insisting

These arms, after all,
are open for no one
else. Posture of air