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…
Chase Twichell, The Snow Watcher, poems: Twichell’s fifth book presents an extraordinary sequence of poems that asks a single obsessive question: What is the self? This is a radical reenvisioning of what makes us human rather than animal. (Ontario)
from “The Changing Face of AIDS” The day he came to give his estimate, the rap he played came echoing amidst the tall Victorians that line our street— a jarring rumble, even in the cave that they create. He wore a rumpled shirt emblazoned with his name. “I’m Rafael— it’s nice to meet you, Dex.”…
I saw them everywhere: in the backyard spiraling up inside the pale lilacs, invisible in the hall closet where old books were stored, even playing in the fireplace ash. Late at night, I’d bump into them in the bathroom. The tile floor was icy and they were on their knees, all those homeless spirits, blowing…
He was believed by his peers to be an important poet, But his erotic obsession, condemned and strictly forbidden, Compromised his standing, and led to his ruin. Over sixty, and a father many times over, The objects of his attention grew younger and younger: He tried to corrupt the sons of his dearest friends; He…
Derek Walcott, What the Twilight Says, essays: In his first prose collection, Walcott brilliantly and lyrically discusses the works of Lowell, Brodsky, and other writers, and the state of West Indian literature and culture. (FSG)
Two months after she died, Billy asked: How’s Lynda doing? Billy, I said, she died, remember? Under the weight of supper’s constellation, the table wavered. Manic, he’d cook and then he’d insist on cleaning up: it calms me. Just now remembering, I remember, embarrassed, he’s dead, too. What’s the distance between a source and its…
Inside ourselves, inside ourselves so long we are engravened there. Inside the hot streets mazing from the Suq to fractious cul-de-sacs, piss smell & whitewashed alleyways, mules & taxi radios throbbing Rai & still inside ourselves. (Still with our own canopic jar— pulsing from its negative …
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