VQR Online

You don’t know the forest
of two minds bound by weeds
grown from one to the other,

The light, nearly unreal
scent of the Mediterranean,
crowds on the streets at midnight—

She asked me to go with her to pick out a trunk for her journey. It seemed to me like a strange request as, though neither of us had said it, we both knew that her leaving was the way we were breaking up. Even stranger was that I agreed to...

The woman next to me was astonishing in her stillness. She appeared perfectly composed, quiet, almost fixed in her concentration. She was softly pretty, her camel’s hair coat slung over the back of her chair and a pile of books in front of...

For the heron that rousts the swamp, thank you.
And for spiders shocked into gradual sleep.

Two pairs of shoes still in their boxes: a pair of clean new Hongmahwang loafers and a pair of gilded, tacky Italian slippers. The footwear of a madman caught last December hiding in a rat-filled hole almost within sight of one of his many...