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“In this example of petrification, the dinosaur bone has been replaced by agate and the central cavity filled with amethyst.”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…
Goodbye people of Armero. Never again shall you dance nor drink ale at the tiendas. Next week are scheduled no first communions no more patio piñatas; no church bells toll no idlers stroll along the Calle Mariscal Sucre. Doña Flor, her customers, will serve no more and the spade of Don José will turn no…
In the city that apparently never was—the here— where the hero dies and dies to no avail, where one is not oneself it suddenly appears (and you, who are you and are you there?) I found myself at the window at last, the room inside dark, it being late, the — outside dark, it being…
Below the barn where you practiced smooking cigarettes for days till you could do it in public like an old hand, where at twelve you lay in secret with your cousin and couldn't kiss her no matter how willing you both were, you stood that day looking back, the field perfect with snow behind you….
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