Article

  • Censor

    Mama called me one thing,named me another.Gave me a mouthon my stomach and fedme. Tied my ankles.Lit a fire round me andcalled it purification.Placed her own veilover my head. Kissedmy belly mouth. Saidit was good. It was hardto eat and speak. I didn’twant to starve. My toesdanced and burned. Ichristened this roastingsomething else. Was cast…

  • Wang Xin Tai Says Goodbye

    I am sometimes in pain and occasionally sitto write my name in dark inks and the brushgoes wobbly, as if excited into shapeswithout me. The crop fields of someone’s childhoodstill bother the edges of my vision, tawnygridded country, low born, wind gripping the assembledheads of wheat, bristling. One job seems nowjust like another. I was…

  • Poem About My Life

    The opening to another country was always insidemy father’s mind, in many forms, in dreams: green swords swirling in a winter mist, colorful moths, sometimesa molar falling out, porcelain clattering onto the table like a single rung chime. When I come into the house, I am heldby him, become a child again. The view from…

  • hike

    now my mother wants to walk out to the rock,the two of us on the wide empty trail, blastedred dust in every direction, fat black flies diving into our faces.this is before she got sick, though i supposethe disease is still there,heat-shimmer under her feet, stones closed over scorpions, over vipers,cracks in the earth deep…

  • Settling and Unsettled

    The aunt witha wand directsthe boys Pushthat sofa catty-cornered.They do and thinkit’s a fresh start. Itheld that spot oncebefore they wereborn. But ourwomen get an itch.When the boysnot around we movethe furnitureagain ourselvesleaning our shouldersinto chifforobes, making finescratches on the floor.When that don’t workwe trim our hair or sitfor hours getting braids.Come home, take themout,…

  • Introduction

    In Lost Children Archive, Valeria Luiselli writes: “I suppose that documenting things—through the lens of a camera, on paper, or with a sound-recording device—is really only a way of contributing one more layer, something like soot, to all the things already sedimented in a collective understanding of the world.” I’m writing this introduction in the…

  • Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction

    Ploughshares is pleased to present Kaitlyn Greenidge with the tenth annual Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction for her story “Doers of the Word,” which appeared in the Summer 2020 issue, guest-edited by Celeste Ng. The $2,500 prize, sponsored by acclaimed writer, former guest editor, longtime patron, and member of the Ploughshares advisory board Alice Hoffman,…