VQR Online

And for his human guests, imperial excess straining
all credulity: say a nightingale embalmed in honey
and stuffed in a swan […]

At the lower fence line under the stars
he hears what at first he takes
to be the neighbor’s mare come
to investigate his apple pocket […]

We dug potatoes from their cabinets of soil, watched
the belly of the earth turn over in its grave, a glimpse of flesh
through darkening ground, roots and greenlings—then the plow.