A note about the poem from Joshua Robbins for MQR's Winter 2024 issue: This poem is one in a book length sequence of antiphonal exchanges between a contemporary Job-like speaker who’s met with a response from a God who is vindictive, lost, stubborn, self-conscious, etc. “Philomela in Texas” was one of those rare poems that settled very quickly once I saw my son twirling in his socks and heard his jeremiad against the Gospel of Texas Pageants and its gender-normative decrees. Haven’t you loved someone so much you would eat them? God’s response to this is simply, “Have this moment, but you know what’s coming.” And of course we do.