VQR Online

A quarter century ago, a presidential candidate, responding to a reporter’s question, admitted that he had used marijuana. But, he added, he did not inhale. Everyone got a good laugh over what seemed an absurdity, but a medieval scholastic...

               I wanted to make a gothic of it all:
the trees on the slope where the island dipped
               into the sea, their weird kinks & angles;

Kimo is early, anxious. He propped open the doors of his bodega hours ago, left his oldest son, Mohammed, behind the counter. Now he’s outside the Department of Consumer Affairs, which doesn’t open for another forty-five minutes. Nine-to...

She has drawn them disembarking a sky-blue bus,
fresh from the bombing of Al Hajar. Some stumble
in the red-blobbed orchard, their hair shedding dust.

At a writing conference several years ago, I had gone straight from the airport to a reception held by an organization that had given me a prize the previous year. The event was in the side room of a restaurant and there was cake. I love...

I’m thinking of how mushrooms will haunt a wet log like bulbous ghosts; 
of how a mushroom may be considered a travesty of a flower