Some turnto the kitchen sink,I prefer backyards.Perfect noonfor cleaning mackerel. No gloves.Squat low and leanforward. Fine drizzleon Moringa,scaling. Scatter of silver. Blood smear.Gutting innardsis more addictivethan love or tea.Spawning clouds of August. Last night,I dreamed of wakinginto you, lazilyinhaling monsoon.Moon seeding in my womb.
Ploughshares is pleased to present Barbara Lock with the fifteenth annual Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction for her story “Keep You Safe,” which appeared in the Summer 2025 issue of Ploughshares, guest-edited by Victor LaValle. The $2,500 prize, sponsored by acclaimed writer, guest editor, longtime patron, and member of the Ploughshares advisory board Alice Hoffman, honors a short story published in…
there is a welcome posture the sun does I wait for it hold myself against it all day hang a string on my ear with a note saying let’s get this place cracking your encouragement was everything at first I thought your tiny sponge was no match for my muddy window I want to be the friend who accepts your gifts sing with wind as though it is a duet then suddenly it is none of them write poems any more the spirit said don’t speak to me you have lost your position in my heart make a noise to get the mouse looking over here all gravity ever did was hold us down whether or not falling gets up in the middle of the night for a little falling in love or falling off a cliff I’m fine to never see them again but I do miss their poems he threw away the only recording of the poet moths circle the brightly lit head of the reporter telling us the body count of the latest war in the rot and filth of a landfill is the poet’s voice I cannot stand it my god picking through garbage I hear you poet-antidote keep singing I will find you please don’t stop singing                                                           for ten years                                                 I lived in my car                                                  people asked                                  where are you going              I always said I’m traveling away                the wanderer the road knows                  the intestinal trans expatriate                               I met a man who feared                               termites though his house                                                was made of stone                                                      I wrote on truck                                                                     stop walls                                            DEAR SLEEPWALKERS                                             EVERY US TAXPAYER                                        IS A WEAPONS DEALER                                         in Mississippi I touched                                            the pig’s heart in a jar                                          for weeks I saw other                                               worlds of clover                                                 could sense the                                                   romantic fusion                                                    of living and                                                     dying in a                                                     frying pan                                                   left with a                                                divulgence                                             what else is                                           paradise losing                                       if not our trust
I want to thank you dear sister, dear clouder and mister,for your rain and your dew, your dew and your rainthat make so much flourish on my arid terrain, my robe of all flowers, my wells and my cisterns. Dear Body of Water, dear evaporation systems,I want to thank you for your fogs and your drizzles,your…
Maybe I was asleep in dawn, the grandestdame that ever unbent me like a willow. Isn’t nature my ma, my salve and solving?Soon the sun had arisen, leaving velvet marks on foxes secure in ferny hideouts,squirrels thronging for fallen acorns, branches torn from oaks in tornado watches, cloudycovers on me. And all my secrets scattered….
follow the back road’s          twist & turn, try to lose                    the red-winged blackbird’s scolding          lyrics—hurry on past—                    hum with summer insects’                              soundscape that doesn’t bitelike the mosquito woods          that root dark & twisted                    their shadow & light          move like the East Twin River                    that offers water                              for the Thompson Familyold growth maple that transforms          sunlight into oxygen                    inhale & you becomepart of this place
Robert Boswell recommends The Plan of Chicago by Barry Pearce (Cornerstone Press, November 2025). “Like James Joyce’s Dubliners (Grant Richards, 1914), this collection of stories accumulates a strange, cohesive power, and the city itself becomes a character—an arbiter, a friend, an inspiration, a tough customer. The stories are beautifully crafted and carefully written, and while the book is utterly unsentimental,…
It was the summer, almost dawn,the windows open, curtains drawn.It was the kind of light that brushes pink bands along the dunesand opens its fingers through privetrubbing salt mist against the screen and bleaching the fox who dragsa bluefish tail and spine from hisjaws before he enters spirals of brambles and disappears.Sometimes, when the dark…
Today, without authority, I woke to morning birds.Without authority, today recalled the feral night that fled.Without authority, I listened to today’s trucks passing—       their diesel hauling diesel, hauling batteries, sent-back clothes.Without, today, authority, I pondered their drivers’ lives, their drivers’ children.Without authority, I stood above—too quiet to hear, today or any day—        root-mats of fungi.Without authority, I…
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