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  • They Came

    For the families of the deceased buried in Jewish Cemeteries desecratedsince January of 2017 They came with small rocksand pebbles to place on the holy groundwhere gravestones had been turned over and desecrated.They came with their relatives’ plot numbersscribbled on scraps of paper.They came with tears in their eyes,they came with their memories andgrief unfurling…

  • I Happy Am

    When Freddy became a robot, a special map appeared in his mind. It alerted him to obstacles and told him the fastest way from here to there. Instead of waiting for the elevator one morning, he flew down the dozen flights of stairs, careful to leap over a big puddle of urine on the landing…

  • The Underworld

    I watch the little weasel rise just partlyout of a cleft in earth, its facea periscope at sea, this way and that but not slow asan owl does it, the moon behind himin old children’s books, his giant tufted headturning full circle and rich with pause.Because the weasel isn’t patient. It’s all frenzy.Through weeds, another…

  • Snakes in the Lobby

    It was my first time teaching. I was nervous about it. My husband had a bottle of Malbec that a student had given him, so he opened it. It tasted awful at nine in the morning, but I drank the whole bottle before going in to teach. I did well in class that morning. I…

  • Still Life with Helicopters

    Almost two thousand years before Da Vinciimagined a machine whose screwlike overhead motor could lift the machine into vertical flight,children in China played with bamboo toys whose propellers, thin and light as dragonflywings, were set on a sharpened stick and spun into the wonder of an object spiraling in the air.The toys were brought back…

  • Music Night

    It’s music night at Mihalis’ taverna, and the musicians wait for the darkness, for the desperation of the cicadas to quiet. They’re the loudest they’ve ever been, everyone says, and the noise is all anyone can talk about. But compared with the last topic of conversation—the fires—it’s an improvement. Mihalis is Aspa’s father, and she…

  • Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction

    Ploughshares is pleased to present Victor LaValle with the seventh annual Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction for his short story “Spectral Evidence,” which appeared in the Summer 2017 issue, guest-edited by Stewart O’Nan. The $1,000 prize, awarded by acclaimed writer and Ploughshares board member and former guest editor Alice Hoffman, honors the best piece of…