Stunning poem by Sharon Olds published in The New Yorker:
Q belonged to Q.&A., to questions, and to foursomes, and fractions, it belonged to the Queen, to Quakers, to quintets— within its compound in the dictionary dwelt the quill pig, and quince beetle, and quetzal, and quail. Quailing was part of Q’s quiddity—the Q quaked and quivered, it quarrelled and quashed. No one was quite sure where it had come from, but it had travelled with the K, they were the two voiceless velar Semitic consonants, they went back to the desert, to caph and koph. And K has done a lot better— 29 pages in Webster’s Third to Q’s 13. And though Q has much to be proud of, from Q.& I. detector through quinoa, sometimes these days the letter looks like what medical students called the Q face—its tongue lolling out. And sometimes when you pass a folded newspaper you can hear from within it a keening, from all the Q’s who are being set in type, warboarded, made to tell and tell of the quick and the Iraq dead.