MASTHEAD Directors DeWitt Henry Peter O'Malley Coordinating Editors for This Issue Madeline DeFrees Tess Gallagher Managing Editor Jennifer Rose Thanks this issue to: Don Lee, Tracey McIntire, Cynthia May, Therese Mageau, Elizabeth Alexander, Randi Schalet, Anne Friedman, Madeleine Beckman, Carol Feingold, Doina Iliescu, Ellen Hinsey, Marcy Hinand, Steve Dykes, Mariette Lippo, Joe Linitz, Melissa Green,…
Loosely bound and buttoned on a pole, clothed in the gardener's cottons, the scarecrow stretches as if to feign sleepiness, and sparrows spurt from the garden, beyond his sleeves. He swells, and soft green light invades the narrow rib, a space to fit a life in, but the breeze drops. It seems he needs only…
Your coffin was pine, a simple fact. Gravediggers in overalls brought sturdy shovels, worn with use and we stepped forward one by one: Heft of the handle in my hand. A spadeful of earth. On my last letter to the hospital I printed crazily, please forward. I told myself you might be going home, knew…
The original intention of editing an issue of Ploughshares was a collection of dramatic verse, either written directly for theatrical performance or adaptable for the stage. There were few submissions. Instead, resolutely lyrical poems came, altering intention. There are many names I would have liked to see here, but the pleasures of discovery of new…
On a dawn walk I startled a great horned owl, wary, near, on a low limb of a tree downhill from me. Those slow wings opened, broad as a man, two men, and he sank fast down into the hillside in blank silence, a wall toppling its whole enormous length that does not touch a…
“In this example of petrification, the dinosaur bone has been replaced by agate and the central cavity filled with amethyst.” —The Great Book of Jewels The greenish light that filters through, Jade-pale, illumines my cold flesh, Obsidian waters bear my weight, Their warmth the salty phlegm of lymph. My brain is crystal, it commands My…
I There is a place between the shoulder and the neck Where everyone wants to be saved. And another where the leg slices the heavy hip. These are arable fields, for human hands only. You speak my name like you need it And mine for veins Which will ring your own name Like a pick…
You are not yet asleep, your breathing slides deep into the sound of rain, its various sounds: the tap on the tin roof, the slash as it blows across the screen, a swish that washes across the shingle siding, it drums up against the window, the heavy gush from the crotch in the roof then…
The needle sinks in. Cold snakes through my veins, chemistry that kills to heal. The doctor chats of skiing, how he glided along the empty, blank expanse of Commonwealth Avenue after the snowfall. I carry home a needle-deep mauve stain. As a child I had a nightmare of my mother, a black bruise on her…
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