Amor, ch’a nullo amato amar perdona, mi prese del constui piacer sì forte, che, come vedi, ancor non m’abbandona. Amor condusse noi ad una morte. —Dante Is this hell, where neighbors will try to burn us out? To clear the woods one doused a cat in gasoline And let her run afire through…
In this field of day lilies just opening, beating for sun in this lush summer bear meadow, I tried to find a way to stay in your world, wife. The field hummed with life, the bugs and frogs and jeering birds but no words came as I had hoped from the sky blue as a…
It was Labor Day, September 2, a Monday, five years ago, and I was twenty-seven years old and about to bring my forty-four-year-old mother and my forty-four-year-old father together for the first time in my adult life. All my life I had daydreamed about this moment, wondered if it would ever happen, and now that…
In the first week of the last month of the semester, a new young inmate came into the classroom, took a seat, and watched the teacher with sharp eyes. Soon he was involved with discussions-even wrote essays, original stuff, quick-zipped them off, so smart. Sharp, and charming, good-looking yet warm, yet an edge of violence….
“She propped her false leg up in the corner . . .” my spiritual advisor says when a strong man comes into the room you flutter your eyelashes & hike up your skirts when a strong man commands your heart flutters skips a beat and you do as you wish ghandi and dr king called…
Maybe it happened as the first long earth-wave rolled through our town. Maybe it was later. We had aftershocks all night. Faith, my wife, wouldn’t sleep inside. No one would but me. Everyone spent the night in the driveways on cots, or on the lawns in sleeping bags, as if this were a neighborhood slumber…
Fei Lo noticed the new clerk right away, a persimmon in a basket of oranges. Three letters on a gold-toned plaque spelled out her name. So as to make no mistake, the old gentleman wrote it in his notebook, fur. He liked to know the names of all the women tellers, as he flirted with…
Cohen Awards Each volume year, the best poem, short story, and nonfiction piece published in Ploughshares are honored with the Cohen Awards. Finalists are nominated by staff editors, and the winners are selected by our advisory editors — comprised of current and former guest editors. Each winner receives a cash prize of $400. The awards…
an ordinary woman leaves her body here when she’s done with it a litterbug she leaves a burden and a warning to us but the dancer’s body is completely gone aah! a jitterbug her soul remains here with us an encouragement what are we supposed to do with it
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