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  • Richard Garcia, Cohen Award

    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…

  • Eternity Suffers From Distemper

    The captain said over the loudspeaker, “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Los Angeles. There is no hope.” Each step a search for balance with my friend, here for the first time, beside me in his loose pants and splayfooted saunter, gliding over the sidewalk slabs uprooted by trees or earthquakes on which I’ve stumbled all…

  • From Shanghai

    The advice note, dropped on my father’s desk in the first week of September 1955, lay unread for a week. My father was away from home, resolving a dispute over burial sites in Manchester. He was a synagogue troubleshooter, the Red Adair of Anglo-Jewish internecine struggles, and it was his job to travel up and…

  • Ron Carlson, Cohen Award

    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…

  • My Spiritual Advisor

    “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…

  • Faith

    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…

  • Fur

    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…

  • Debra Spark, Cohen Award

    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

    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