i. Displaced Persons Out on the street the children are playing soldier. It’s the end of the century and still they play soldier. Let’s be unfair. Blame them for the toasted corpses, The orphans, widows, and amputees. One aims A broomstick, another a plastic missile launcher, And the little ones on the lawn roll over,…
That night we drink too many sad stories and go to bed upset with attempted matrimony. After undressing and before making love it’s necessary to not speak of the dream where we become so entangled that I have to get out of bed as her and go to the mirror, wanting to write a note,…
Cohen Awards Each volume 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…
When the dove of whom there is no memory fell into the sea We were uncreated, oh yeah, we were speechless before the sky. There were no words to be sung on the water without edges. Lord had shown his preference for his serpents and his mosses. Into depths we drowned, the familial and…
Your daffodils rose up and collapsed in their yellow bodies on the hillside garden above the brick patio you laid out in sand, squatting with pants pegged and face masked like a beekeeper’s against the black flies. Buttercups circle the planks of the old wellhead, bright boisterous convergence, this May while your silken gardener’s body…
Sprawled on the back of a flatbed truck we cradled hoes, our minds parceling rows of cotton to be chopped by noon. Dawn stuck in the air. Blackbirds rang the willows. Ahead, a horse trailer stretched across the road. Braced by youth and lengths of summer breeze we didn’t give a damn. We’d be…
i. Do they hate each other, I wonder, she who will live on and he who is dying? I fill their bird feeder with safflower. Each dip of the orange pitcher scatters seed from its lip to the earth, in ecstasy. An arc. A small rain falls down. Bruised light a nacre over everything. My…
If you don’t like these stories, you should’ve read the ones I didn’t take. Even though that’s not accurate, it’s probably the only thing I could say in this space to truly arrest the attention of the curious soul bent on simply reading a few good stories (which, in fact, he/she will find here). But,…
Peter had always been more than thoughtful in not pressing her about her past, and Beatrice was sure it was a reason for her choice of him. Most men, coming of age in a time that extolled openness and disclosure, would have thought themselves remiss in questioning her so little. Perhaps because he was a…
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