When Shirley Weems submarines her Barbiein the shallows, spooking the catfishwhile her brother and me sit on upturned bucketswith cane poles on our side of the pondnot bothering anybody, I notehow the light around Shirley seems so rosy,all a-twinkle with its ownself-contained Shirley music. I pick a dirt clodI don’t think contains a rock, but…
In poetry, our winner is Josephine Yu, for her poems, “Never Trust a Poem That Begins with a Dream” and “Narcissist Revises Tidal Theory.” Ploughshares’ poetry editor, John Skoyles, writes: “Josephine Yu’s poems are alternately sprightly and grave, saucy and sincere. You never know what you might find: a Catholic school girl blouse next…
A basket in the shape of a sunflower— still hanging on your bedroom wall. You made it in school. You loved it so muchyou wouldn’t stop making it. Or couldn’tstop. We don’t agree, on what you said.But I was your favorite. I thought, What kind of boymakes such a basket? Professional looking, alltight and golden,…
Some say the Army and some the Marines and some say the Air Force is the greatest sightsweeping over this crippled earth but I say love for example a wedding the bride’s face hiddenas though no longer hers to share and the sound of wailing oh, Anaktoria what have they done the soldiers on your wedding day
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 seemsto me the most American of activities, up therewith waving the incendiary dandelion of sparklersor eating potato salad with green specks of relish,the German kind, salad of immigrants, of allthe strange pickled bits we carryover from other places, like we did on Eastermornings in Nebraska, stuffing our Sundayshoes…
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 justtoo much: Oh, the tragedy of namingthen losing a son named Marco—born to love and to wander, whole head submerged in the starched cup of an outsized Playtex bra, divingback between a…
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, bornCapricorn, actuary of the stars, he’s planning my death,sure of the thermodynamic heaven he’s invented. Because energymust 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 the absolute, container of soot…
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