Not that you were too young to die, though thirty-five is too young, and not because they killed you in the middle of the night the most premeditated way. Not exactly that you didn't deserve it, either, having shot an old man to death for his rare coins and wasted another for money whose sister-in-law…
Wyman knows the girl is awake because he hears her finger nails clicking on the passenger-side window, keeping measures of the music that comes through the radio. He wants to glance at her, but is nervous about taking his eyes off the road in the dark. Audra Barranco, she said her name is. He loves…
Translated from Greek by Martin McKinsey She had always said, "When I die, if my Angel comes and takes me for a last look at all the places I've ever lived in or been to, it won't take him more than a couple of minutes." In other words, that's how sheltered and paltry her life…
Midwinter you can see past the trees, white oaks and tulip poplars, tops golden in the low sun. Today, not a cloud. The old fireroad leads up Old Raggedy, up to boulders and the sheer outcrop silver with snowmelt. What matters lasts a long time: rock, timber, streambeds with predicaments where the water falls. But…
Day off in dark suit & hat, looking though the viewfinder of a new eight-millimeter Bell & Howell camera, paying no mind the open windows, the seizure. Just how more than half the targets on the grassy knoll are potential customers, models, women, how accident & aim could fit them all, including the car, into…
My first thought in editing this issue of Ploughshares was to put together a collection of autobiographical and fictional writings that tested the border between those preposterously rough groupings. And the very first piece that crossed my desk, Susan Bergman's "Imago," confirmed me in this intention. "Imago" is a brilliant family portrait whose narrator claims…
MASTHEAD Guest Editor Tobias Wolff Executive Director DeWitt Henry Managing Editor & Fiction Editor Don Lee Poetry Editor Joyce Peseroff Office Manager Renee Rooks Assistant Fiction Editor Debra Spark Founding Publisher Peter O'Malley Staff Assistant: Phillip Carson. Assistant Proofreader: Holly LeCraw Howe. Fiction Readers: Billie Lydia Porter, Karen Wise, Sara Nielsen Gambrill, Phillip Carson, Holly…
I dream of a crowded street where I break A kiss into your mouth; instead my windows Are darkened with curtains and in fear I want to hide you, your sigh, my hand Cupping your fast breath so those who walk by Will not hear. We do even this honest thing Wrong and lie down…
Kennedy Playground Washington, D.C. We forced our faces into the circular frame a stringless hoop made, hoping more than silence & light would fall through. We fought for position. We fouled & shoved. We high-fived God. Our Converse All-Stars burned enough rubber to rival The Devil & his mama. Hoop, horseshoe, noose. We aimed at…
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