VQR Online

A Black Family History

the belief was eels were male catfish,
believe if you leave a fried one alone 
return to red-raw meat, or a trickle 
trail of blood and crumb, a resurrection

“Up!” she signals, syllabic cup
     meaning wherever I am now—up
or down—floor, high chair—change direction!—

Sometime before I turned twenty, I was saved twice from dying. Neither time was by my design or choice.

It follows you everywhere,
I think, even this hillside
of mint and yellow gorse
on the far side of the sea,

I live in rural Scotland, in a village of sixty-five houses, with no cell service or shops. There is a kirk, a pub; there are more sheep than people. For the first time in my life, I have a garden. A garden with more square footage than my...

VQR columnist Laura Kolbe’s series of essays considers American art through poet and physician Kolbe’s own personal and experiential lens.

On the Richness of the Black Funeral Tradition

1. sharpening the white epidermis to machete on 
gum-grown whetstones belonging to inheritors 
of mitochondrial Eve’s Earth-blown nakedness

Finding Your Voice in an American Prison