Corpses push up through thawing permafrost, as I scrape salmon skin off a pan at the sink; on the porch, motes in slanting yellow light undulate in air. Is Venus at dusk as luminous as Venus at dawn? Yesterday I was about to seal a borax capsule angled up from the bottom of a decaying…
We shelter best that which destroys us. Language. Speaking to the other is like this: standing on a small raft; baskets of apples to balance it; a murder of crows downstream. There are no maps of the waters that cross through this house. A shut door does no good. Even pots with lids…
The king is murdered and his daughter, Mis, goes mad, growing fur and killer claws, escaping into the woods. She is tamed by Dubh Ruis, a harp player. Marrying her, he becomes king. —Irish legend Don’t touch me, don’t come near. I’ll shred your flesh from bone. Don’t even stare. I can smell you…
The night is busy with the growth of stars. Above us peaceful. Shiyáázh, my son, fusses in his cradleboard. The protective rainbow shaped by his father arches over his face to protect him. In the dark sand below Monster Slayer’s archenemy rises again to pull us off this rock where we’ve taken refuge since winter’s…
Yes, I was utterly wrong, I thought that humans were vertical wounds against the horizon, feeding their own fissures with wood and coal, knocking constellations with empty heads, smiling at desire with a missing golden tooth. And they aren’t like that, instead, humans are just humans like the songs that birds sing when braiding with…
Don’t look up, because the ceiling is suffering some serious violations of the electrical code, the whole chaotic kelplike mess about to shower us with flames. I think I can render this clearly enough— Bert’s saxophone resting between his knees and propped against the wheelchair’s seat where his body keeps shape-shifting— he’s Buddha then Shop-Vac…
Ploughshares is pleased to present Mark Turpin with the fourteenth annual John C. Zacharis First Book Award for his collection of poems, Hammer (Sarabande, 2003). The $1,500 award—which is named after Emerson College"s former president—honors the best debut book by a Ploughshares writer, alternating annually between poetry and fiction. This year"s judge was the poet…
translated by Jennifer Grotz When you appease my heart, I’ve nothing left to say, my agitated words fall fast asleep. I don’t even remember my petty dramas— your lullaby sings me awake. Others assure me I imagine this, that to receive you the wound in my chest must stay fresh. And that the anguish…
When the poles clatter past, the years fall away, a spider drops from the petals of a flower, space is ever more empty the larger it grows, the steel wheels chunk-chunk-chunk on the joints of the rails, the friction making sparks, stars crushed and invisible to us inside. There is a distance that diminishes as…
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