Some say the Army and some the Marines and some say the Air Force is the greatest sight sweeping over this crippled earth but I say love for example a wedding the bride’s face hidden as though no longer hers to share and the sound of wailing oh, Anaktoria what have they done the soldiers…
In nonfiction, our winner is Mary Winsor, for her essay “Rock-a-bye, Ute.” Ploughshares’ Editor-in-chief, Ladette Randolph, writes, “Mary Winsor’s essay, ‘Rock-a-bye, Ute,’ is a meditation on environmental history, native American legend, and family—with its bittersweet ties to the past—refracted through the lens of second chances after bodily pain and loss. As her western family gathers…
and I answer by driving around, which seems to me the most American of activities, up there with waving the incendiary dandelion of sparklers or eating potato salad with green specks of relish, the German kind, salad of immigrants, of all the strange pickled bits we carry over from other places, like we did on…
a father has lost his son. He circles shoe racks, lingerie, dressing rooms, calling out “Marco!…Marco!…” We all want to help, but it’s just too much: Oh, the tragedy of naming then losing a son named Marco— born to love and to wander, whole head submerged in the starched cup of an outsized Playtex bra,…
In the Plan B essay series, writers discuss their contingency plans, extraliterary passions, and the roads not traveled. As a student in Tokyo in the 1980s I would often go to the local Shinto shrine just to listen to the quiet. Small and undistinguished, a gap between concrete commercial buildings, the shrine was…
This practical kid, born Capricorn, actuary of the stars, he’s planning my death, sure of the thermodynamic heaven he’s invented. Because energy must go somewhere in this system, in his I’ll be repurposed as a tree. And this comforts me, as no discount coupons for paradise ever could. Finally fitting, I’ll meet my zero as…
O tulip, tulip, you bloom all day and later sway a deep-waisted limbo above the dinner table, waiting for a coin to drop into your well, for the stars to pin your stem to their lapel. Soon, on ocean winds, dawn cries its devotion, our world entranced once more into being. Let go your sumptuous…
I walk uptown with a letter in my head, past the piers and the languishing seals, the spiral of a spring day, landmark, harbor, inlet and bay; the ocean into more ocean, the gray of a gray sky. Dear God. Dear Absentee Landlord Who Collects the Checks. Dear Barbershop Glass and Barbicide Blue. Dear Recession…
The Look2 essay series, which replaces our print book reviews, takes a closer look at the careers of accomplished authors who have yet to receive the full appreciation that their work deserves. Reviews of new books can still be found on our blog at http://pshares.org. Devastating partings—man from woman, person from place—haunt the…
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