The invisible man inside me is crying. He has lightning in his head. His hands fool tentatively with my breasts and all of his legs are dry. The invisible man—I have him surrounded. He is crying blood with his bones in the soup. He is a walking air meal. There is meat in his hair…
the laurel bronzed the brittle reins the chariot frozen in air wir sind dabei—we were here who never were anywhere 28 years and now light as a girl on a horse riding the petrified spine of the city goodbye goddess goodbye Victory Berlin, Brandenburger Tor, December 1989
I. My father believed this was the worst of all possible worlds: he yearned for Australia. This was what he saw: land. That was all. Why he didn't pine for Colorado or Guam I'll never understand. I know nothing of his life except for the details: married at nineteen, left college a year later. He…
Amid our many complaints the president heads a new world order beginning to broadcast. Her skin is never my skin. It is where we cross over to whatever is in store. Her dream is anchored to the pilings, sequences of a goddess talking softly to her boat for a long time. In my…
MASTHEAD Coordinating Editor for This Issue M. L. Rosenthal Executive Director DeWitt Henry Managing Editor / Associate Fiction Editor Don Lee Poetry Editor for This Issue Jennifer Rose Associate Poetry Editor Joyce Peseroff Assistant Editor David Daniel Editorial Assistant Jessica Dineen Founding Publisher Peter O'Malley Staff: Kevin Supples and Michael Rainho. Editorial Interns: Margaret Bezucha,…
I. When my brother died, a stranger drove his gray flocked coffin none of us chose, across the country to the cemetery plot. On top of the box were propped someone else's flowers, dead a day sooner. Brown-edged, they stank, …
The walk home is later and so it happens in darker light. Such a wind on the face, on the glamorous graveyard, the city with its bronze horses and their men, and the white stone shrines light up at night like jewels. The air is less supple, less fecund here. The bats are out. In…
I am honored to serve as editor for this issue of Ploughshares, but with this sense of honor comes an interesting perplexity. The magazine has presented issues on special topics, issues on issues, and issues devoted to specific genres. For a number of reasons, I decided to offer an installment that was as generous a selection…
Female in the afterlife, Rimbaud, photographed sits, beautiful in the waste (a dress, a chair a tent among junked cars). How lovely the feminine muscles of his arms But he is relaxed. No longer does a human soul, like a shining noose, trail from heaven (still, absentmindedly, he reaches…
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