It was another round. The cloud's puffed eye. A thumb torn out of the pie. The pie thrown into her face. Not bat a lash. Not lash the fields of whining grass. Not bash the sun into a simpleton. She who made the trumpet gleam and blaze made the smoky cricket weep. He who put…
As an Asian In 1965, when I was nine, my father moved us from Japan to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He had been an exchange student at Louisiana State University years ago, and now LSU had invited him to be a visiting professor in the agriculture department. We rented an apartment near campus, across the street…
As soon as she cleans her tray, she stops By the office, picks up a grocery bag Marked with her name in red crayon And spends the rest of her lunch cleaning Candy wrappers, twigs, leaves, and other trash From the school's scrubby patch Of front lawn. She does this diligently, No complaints, as if…
Lump of vein Rack of lamb, the lame leg— today—a wing apart from the central thing. I find I found and off the ground O O O awful news. I've feathers and no lift.
MASTHEAD Coordinating Editors for This Issue James Alan McPherson DeWitt Henry Executive Director DeWitt Henry Managing Editor / Associate Fiction Editor Don Lee Associate Poetry Editor Joyce Peseroff Assistant Editor David Daniel Office Manager Jessica Dineen Founding Publisher Peter O'Malley Thanks this issue to: Colleen Westbrook; our editorial interns Janet Choi and Lev Grossman; and…
The Pilgrim: Blue plough bones High eye socket Soot rock gristle Be with me Be with me Be with me Never be not with us Fox The Glacier: My gentle coming: fall I am with you my Gold-pan My sieved and sieving brow Most wanted: Favorite: Wanted and needed and loved: Diaspora.
The cage is the only creature alive singing in the yard singing its giant heart out singing its giant heart out for us. We who have been the other's hour, we who have made the minutes accountable, and the seconds lively and saw the big tree lovely, we and our hands slowly fall apart, a…
Take all away from me, but leave me ecstasy. -Emily Dickinson Out of all modesty-and sanity-I would like to think of these poems and stories as approaching the ecstatic state, rather than being expressions of ecstasy. In fact, when I called for work for this issue of Ploughshares, I said I was mostly interested in…
Water Hot green plastic bucket Hole Rabbit in the wall of the ground Bone Rabbit, hip, shoulder Leaf under a leaf of dust On my way to wash, The heavy buzz of flies like bees: There’s a carcass here. Rabbit. Eels Live to be ninety. . . An eel will eat your hand. I smell…
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