Dad pays him to teach me the boy thought as the old man watched from behind jib— The cool burnt cherry from his pipe sweetened the ocean smell, its spoilage and cure of brine. On tack or coming about, the man was practical, oracular: Weight the gunwale on close hauls. Don't luff. He read out…
My sister and I are fighting as always in dreams, our faces an inch apart. She's angry because I'm fat, and I because she speaks what I already know without kindness. On the counter: carving knives and platters (perhaps Mother's) (perhaps Mother's dead in the cabinet) and these distract us—what should we do? Don't pick…
Eight or nine cars, lights off, motors running, in the dark school parking lot waiting for an overdue bus. Each unexpectedly alone with the undersides of the day's thoughts, and the long shadows cast by words; intruding upon them one thought, unwelcome, insistent, cyclical as the flashing numerals on the dashboard clock, which keeps returning…
On the bus from Nashville to Lonoke, Arkansas, Jim Yankee Fish sits in back, in the star suite, with Bones, the bass player, while the star is up front doing business. The young and old singers all call Fish "Yank" when they see him in bars or on the road. Yank, they whisper, and he…
The gray is terminal this time of year. The tourists cleared out months ago, leaving us islanders to find one another in the barren streets, exchange pleasantries, then wander home. I drive into Vineyardhaven for my morning cup of jumpstart while the ferry's moan pushes through air that is damp lint. Somnambulent, the winter months…
1. Come back, little Sheeba. That's Uncle Jack thinking he's being smart, but I don't answer. I keep picking strawberries, my fingers red as the berries so I get mixed up thinking I'm seeing a ripe one to grab when it's only my own hand deep in the green leaves. Twenty quarts, twenty-one quarts. One…
The 1992 Denise and Mel Cohen Awards for the outstanding poem, short story, and nonfiction published in Ploughshares Volume 17 Each of these awards carries a prize of $400 and is made possible through the generosity of Denise and Mel Cohen of New Orleans. The Cohen Awards are nominated and judged by the advisory and…
The light that fails to stop him from staring Into the fire, the way her head is lowered Between her arms until the shoulder blades Emerge up into half-wings. The light That refuses to qualify as an act Of kindness, her mouth that does not speak. Also the meadow with the one faithful Tree standing…
Cal used to be president of their fraternity. But then he was in a car wreck. Cal and Hap and a group of boys from the fraternity house had been out to the bars, and they were on their way home. Afterward Hap often pictured Cal dipping his hand into a cooler of beer, letting…
No products in the cart.