There are nights I dream of goldfish and in my dreams they sing to me in fluted, piercing sopranos like the Vienna Boys’ Choir. Although in the daylight they are mostly silent and ravenous— the suction-cup grip of their mouths on my fingertip like tiny rubber bath- room plungers when they rise to strike at…
The movie about the great Siberian rose, Brought back to life by the doctor who killed her, Was playing a block away at the Lane. The usher Was dressed like a nurse, and scowled, and told us Not to make noise. I wish we had For as soon as the movie began, a tomblike room…
The shelled corn bin was like a huge box over the alleyway of the corncrib. Millions of crisp and yellow corn kernels, ten feet deep, and ten feet square at the top. The boys liked to dive into it, letting it sting their hands and faces as they squirmed until they almost disappeared into the…
Cohen Awards Each year, we honor the best short story and poem published in Ploughshares with the Cohen Awards, which are wholly sponsored by our longtime patrons Denise and Mel Cohen. Finalists are nominated by staff editors, and the winners — each of whom receives a cash prize of $600 — are selected by our…
1. That the wandering would be the more-favored part, this was unexpected, exceptional. Even the gnaw of the harness, faces shawled against the dust, nights without fire—sweet to him now— even this. Who could find that point again, at the canvas steppes where exhaustion forced them on into the serrated mouths of grass rather than…
Quadruple bypass: yes, he had it. What happens next is anybody’s guess. After the surgeon’s pre-op visit he pulled the tubes and needles out, got dressed and stalked outside to smoke a cigarette. The surgeon threatened not to operate. Old heart, old curmudgeon, old genius, terrified old man who more than anyone knows form is…
Cosmologists, epic poets, holy men in exile— They all found their way to the illustrious library. All lovers of knowledge were welcome to a niche In that bristling hush, no matter how shaggy or ragged. There were the usual cynics and the inevitable stoics. Some were sages without honor, scrawling out summas In their mongrel…
Two Italians painted on both sides of the grand marble staircase in the Scuola di San Rocco—The Plague. The great equalizer. In this democracy of the dead, a woman and her baby are flung over a pallet on wheels, a man with sinews and massive calves pushes them, and it could be almost tender how…
After graduating from Amherst College in 1963, I lived in Manhattan for the summer and worked at Redbook, of all places. At night, I pounded out Kafkaesque short stories, which I promptly sent to The New Yorker and which were promptly rejected. In the fall, I headed for Cambridge. I had been granted a Woodrow…
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