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Leaf of My Puzzled Desire

A leaf falls in high wind and drifts along a path unfolding by simple rules: rise away from heat, sink toward cold. I’ll claim this mirage forming in the heat field tinged the reluctant blue of made belief. Move rapidly toward the rising heat. After an odd juke, the leaf, drained, pauses on a stone…

Maxine Swann, Cohen Award

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…

Tomes

There is a section in my library for death and another for Irish history, a few shelves for the poetry of China and Japan, and in the center a row of imperturbable reference books, the ones you can turn to anytime, when the night is going wrong or when the day is full of empty…

The Biopsy

When I closed my eyes I thought about playing tennis with him a long time ago on the deserted court, a mile from the ocean. And the rallies that lasted a long time. While the overhead clouds drifted like gulls. Thought not so     much about him as the field of us. The sun-embalmed afternoons…

Mark Doty, Cohen Award

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…

Coconut in the Mail

for Mary Sorry for the tardiness of my response. I’ve been lost in thought, unable to reach you. Your message arrived, brown, brain-sized nut, stripped to its rough shell, my name and address singed on. I want you to know I read it carefully, held it to my ear and listened to the mystery that…

The Heart

The child is being pushed by the mother, in the swing that lifts over the deep lawn in May. Is being pushed towards the tall hedge of bamboo where the father must go in a world that is houses and neighbors gardens and furniture. Until the child floats backwards through     the air to be…

Contributors’ Notes

MASTHEAD Guest Editor Lorrie Moore Editor Don Lee Poetry Editor David Daniel Associate Editor Susan Conley Assistant Fiction Editor Maryanne O'Hara Founding Editor DeWitt Henry Founding Publisher Peter O'Malley Editorial Assistants: Gregg Rosenblum, Amy King, Samantha Myers, and Tom Herd. Fiction Readers: Scott Clavenna, Monique Hamzé, Tammy Zambo, Emily Doherty, Leah Stewart, Michael Rainho, Andrea…