Article

Volcano

What is this writing life? I was living alone in a house once, and had set up a study on the first floor. A portable green Smith-Corona typewriter sat on the table against the wall. I made the mistake of leaving the room. I was upstairs when I felt the first tremor. The floor wagged…

Bad Family

Sometimes all the meanness in our house condenses to thick smoke: the black-lettered words from our fights, gray mist of barely nasty thoughts, the chemical grimness of our meals, oils secreted while screaming, even the runny filth of our son's diapers steams into our faces like fog from some poisoned sea to blind us, choke…

Aubade

You're going to waste away in dreams so thin they'll slide down a long straw and disappear in a stream going counterclockwise in Tasmania. We're having fritters and syrup, wheatcakes and strawberry butter, double-roasted coffee, and heavy cream. It's your summer solstice, blue green basic morning. This is positively your last chance. I mean it….

Introduction

Editing an issue of Ploughshares turned out to be more mysterious than I expected. I began by taking a few poems and a story that I thought had form and significance. After that, I found myself looking at manuscripts as if they were fragments of something larger — pieces of glass from a crystal ball…

Another Place and Time

Like an accordion, a plastic, penicillin-green curtain stretched and cordoned off the room, aluminum handles disappearing with a click into the wall. Mrs. Hansen then nodded behind her bifocals as Theresa Mills stood unaspiringly in front of the corkboard, bleeding crucifix, and flag to read out loud the first chapter from our Social Studies text,…

Midwest Albas

In heartland cafeterias, I hear the resolute chirp of women heaping pale food on white platters, tuna surprise, baby corn niblets, flash-frozen cod, potatoes whipped, ridged, stuffed, mashed, washed down with peach cobblers, coconut pie, sighing under vanilla ice cream in a scoop, and loaves, wafers, snaps, strips, squares, puffs, crullers, cakes, guests at the…