Ploughshares is pleased to present Danez Smith with the twenty-sixth annual John C. Zacharis First Book Award for their book of poetry [insert] boy (2014, YesYes Books). The $1,500 award, which is named after a former president of Emerson College, honors the best debut book by a Ploughshares writer and alternates annually between poetry and…
Russell woke, his mouth dry and sour with fear. His back ached and his hands were stiff, raw, the blood swelling in his knuckles like he was young again, fighting again. A warm wind came from the window, pure and solitary-smelling in the way of predawn hours. And he could smell the jasmine that Alice…
Nick Flynn, My Feelings, poems. (Graywolf, 2015) Alice Hoffman, Faithful, a novel. (Simon & Schuster, November 2015)
Nick Flynn recommends Likenesses by Heather Tone (American Poetry Review, 2016): “Strap yourself into this book, allow yourself to ride it all the way to the top—remember (as Tone writes), ‘At a certain point it would be wise to ask yourself why you are doing this.’” Jane Hirshfield recommends May Day by Gretchen Marquette (Graywolf,…
She sits on a beach blanket, Gazing in her vacant way From the shadow of a striped umbrella, Talking to herself, The future a doomed plane Yet to take off. I am a baby, sitting Buddha-like Banging the sand, She is young, beautiful, Stranded in the past. Wisps of her hair lift in wind, The…
Go ahead, tell the one about the body & how it has been crafted: a house you’ll someday make a home of. Built-in bookshelves, bay windows, light on every side. You are carpenter & foreman, architect & owner. You’ll come to love the sloping floors, the doors sticking in their frames. All yours. Brick by…
Someone’s in a Hawaiian shirt again out on the parquet, doing the white-guy dance to Celebrate good times, come on!, one palm cemented to a sudsy bowl adorned with mini parasol that will end up between his teeth like Carmen’s rose then raffishly planted in some woman’s hair and she’ll feel fancy and adored. Who…
Don’t get jealous, she says, flicking her cigarette out into the cold and closing the window. I watch the snowflakes blow past, study the piles of books around her bed. I haven’t read any of them. A human body, laid open across two pages like plucked wings. Circles of constellations. I thought I could be…
The ark is barking baby barks. The hems are hawing while there’s sawing going on. Who is that high up, stemming and sterning? We’ve got barrels of loosely packed potatoes, We’ve got the first thick leaves of greens plucked and rolled, We’ve got the got we need to get on with it. If I’ve cleared…
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