Thierry I am here because it’s too crowded on the other side of this sentence.Take this page—where do I place myself? At the beginning or the end,or in the middle? Or maybe in the corner. I can’t be everywhere, that’swhat I’ve been told my entire life. They say we have a choice, but wheredo you…
At the airport the conveyor bears small yachts shaped like luggageinto the distance, and I am headed, when they let me pass through the X-ray arch, toward home. There is a distancesometimes greater than this between us, since you are in another state—gaseous, solid, liquid, light—and I admitI am often absent lately from whatever is…
I shall speak of the tendency among sane and healthy persons to seeimages flash unaccountably into existence. —Francis Galton This is a tale not of science but of blue. Some say this heat is the worst in history, but history is huge and Idoubt it has never been hotter across the Northern peninsula. Still, the bears…
On the morning she became a young widow,my grandmother, startled by a sudden shadow,looked up from her work to see a hawk turnher prized rooster into a cloud of feathers.That same moment, halfway around the worldin a Minnesota mine, her husband died,buried under a ton of rockfall.She told me this story sixty years ago.I don’t…
The auditorium falls to a hush. The audience settles in their seats. Sun backlights the room through a wall of windows: this evening of summer solstice. The first reader walks to the podium. She is a novelist, and this novelist smiles at the room, a graceful and warm and kind smile, welcoming everyone and introducing…
In nonfiction, our winner is Jacob Newberry, for his essay “What You Will Do,” about his experiences in Israel and Palestine. The essay, Ploughshares’ Editor-in-chief, Ladette Randolph, writes, “is the story of Newberry’s own well-intentioned but misguided determination to resolve the differences between the Palestinians and Israelis (one shopping trip into Palestine at a time). It…
The sun was nothing more than an orangethe day Lisa ran for the ice cream truck.It was small and even if it held sweetness,even if it seeped Vitamin C, it couldn’t stopthe car from barreling down Mott Avenue,couldn’t shine enough to show the driver the eight-year-old girl dashing in front of his Pontiac so that…
You are a wretch and a leech and a dirtyold man and have been trying to pushinside me for years. Well, come on then.There’s something about the plum warm air. Usually at this time of day I don’twant to see people. Usually when I’m onthe old swings I think about the manwho stopped his car…
In poetry, our winner is Jen Silverman, for her series of Bath poems. Ploughshares poetry editor John Skoyles writes: “Silverman’s poems have a declarative force and a surprise in every phrase, a combination that results in a tone both intimate and astonishing.” Silverman is a New York–based poet and playwright who has, so far, mainly…
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