In the days of his youth, Aldo often found himself-as many of us did-in a state of grace, and the sensation in his boundless filling heart resembled, to his mind, the transports of love. His Midwestern college, set down in the middle of a cornfield and isolated from any big city by fifty miles of…
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…
You learned the intimate— to recognize faces, latch on to the breast, cry out your pain, smile into a smile —and you held that knowledge close in your strong reflexive grasp, as if under your fingers, those tender miniatures, a secret lay at the center of your palm. Now you unfist your hands and reach…
Of modern North American cases one of the earliest and most widely reported abductions occurred in the early sixties to a mixed race couple in New Hampshire . . . -K. Clifford Stanton, Taken: 12 Contemporary UFO Abduction Narratives Bessie is telling the colonel about the ship now, and Bernie, sitting stiffly on the sectional…
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…
Delicate—the way at three she touched her hands tip to tip, each finger a rib framing the teepee of her hands. So tentative that joining, taking tender hold of her body, as if the ballast of her selfhood rested there. Already she could thread tiny beads through the eye and onto string, correctly placing each…
We were almost out of money, so Trace went to steal us another bottle of something. We were celebrating. The holiday weekend was almost over, and the mechanic was due back in town the next morning. We’d finally be able to get back on the road. I sat on the rear bumper of the van…
MASTHEAD Guest Editor Charles Baxter Editor Don Lee Poetry Editor David Daniel Assistant Editor Gregg Rosenblum Assistant Fiction Editor Maryanne O'Hara Associate Poetry Editor Susan Conley Founding Editor DeWitt Henry Founding Publisher Peter O'Malley Editorial Assistants: Elizabeth Dresner, Colleen Hubbard, and Carolyn Rathjen. Fiction Readers: Nicole Hein, Kris Fikkan, Amy Shellenberger, Nicole Vollrath, Darla Bruno,…
for Kiernan when my daughter’s tugged home—diminishing yellow skull a balloon blown beyond the western pond—the raspberry tang of shampoo seeps into pillows and futon; her tuneless whistle needles the hall; the torn, lacy hem of her soul nestles among Victorian dolls strung in hammocks along one wall. Porcelain…
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