Ellen Bryant Voigt: Kyrie, a mosaic of sonnets that conjures up the influenza pandemic of 1918-19, which killed half a million people in the U.S. Voigt first focuses on a family and then branches out to separate voices. (Norton)
You were going to ask me why I am here, and I’m going to tell you. But I want you to look at the scar on my arm, this one right here in the shape of a mouth, though not a human one. I like to talk about my scars, I like to talk about…
Narcissist #1 I’m so amazing I could lick myself. Narcissist #2 Did you see how well I licked myself? Narcissist #3 I was so upset. They barely noticed the way I licked myself.
Dan Wakefield: Expect a Miracle, a nonfiction book that examines the everyday miracles Wakefield himself has experienced, interleaved with accounts of extraordinary events in the lives of his friends and acquaintances. (HarperCollins San Francisco)
Alberto Perera, librarian, granted no credibility to police profiles of dangerous persons. Writers, down through the centuries, had that look of being up to no good and were often mistaken for smugglers, assassins, fugitives from justice-criminals of all sorts. But the young man invading his sanctum, hands hidden in the pockets of his badly soiled…
1. The Fingers They are small enough to find and care for a tiny stone. To lift it with wobbly concentration from the ground, from the family of stones, up past the pursed mouth— for this we are thankful—to a place level with her eyes to take a close look, a look…
Cohen Awards Each volume year, we honor the best poem, short story, and essay 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 are selected by our advisory editors. Each winner receives a cash prize of…
Every dusk there gather in the trees birds whose bodies lean heavy as magnolias on the bent and swaying branches. Every dusk, in trees, birds gather, looking heavy as magnolias or the shadows of magnolias, since in color birds are darker; and since they scatter, turning to reassemble on their branches, burning slowly in their…
“As it leaves dawn behind and advances into day, light prostitutes itself and is redeemed—ethics of twilight— at the moment it vanishes.” —E. M. Cioran Ethics of secrets and vanishings, of sunny downfalls and cloudy coverups. The reign of commonsense has ended and strangeness floats through the air. Deceptive moonlight, dusky erasures—…
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