Welcome to the new Ploughshares website! For answers to commonly asked questions, read here.
One night a woman's breast came to a man's room and began to talk about her twin sister. Her twin sister this and her twin sister that. Finally the man said, but what about you, dear breast? And so the breast spent the rest of the night talking about herself. It was the same as…
The Burbank evening hugs the little jet. Commuters, standing on the rubber-padded stairs, look inside the engines and feel comforted, see how sensual, full-lipped they are, the metal daisies in each one, then open the starved briefcases on their laps and study graphs of annual reports . . . You're traveling alone, crying, trying to…
It's dark when they scuff off to school. It's good to trample the thin panes of casual ice along the tracks where twice a week an anachronistic freight lugs grain and radiator hoses to a larger town. It's good to cloud the paling mirror of the dawn sky with your mouthwashed breath, and to thrash…
20/The Moon, the Whole Moon, and Nothing But the Moon Glorious, nourishing, flourishing moon, swollen with all the raw energy of time and what it does as light, I take off my hat, my coat, my tie, my shoes and socks to you. Breathing you in like an oceanic breeze, how can I expect to…
I can clear my name. It was my brother, not me, Who stole your fruit And sold that pop Bottle on your porch, Nickel for his pocket And a jaw breaker that Shattered like a star When Mother got us alone, Naked with our two sins. It was brother, not me. I was saintly that…
1. Spring, and so they danced mid-air. He circled and repeated until she paused to a second's locking. Gazing by the window, dishtowel in hand, I almost missed it: red and gold, two velvets shivering, then she was away. He perched on the nearest branch; dead-still, head cocked, as if to save the event, as…
The angel kissed my alphabet, it tingled like a cobweb in starlight. A few letters detached themselves and drifted in shadows, a loneliness they carry like infinitesimal coffins on their heads. She kisses my alphabet and a door opens: blackbirds roosting on far ridges. A windowpeeper under an umbrella watches a funeral service. Blinkered horses…
Her soul has returned to the deep void, her spirit returned to mist: She stayed among mortal men for only eighteen years. Yesterday, I gave away her skirts and sashes to monks, My heart broke: they still were tied to the strings of her lute.
If I flash, you'll appear. Backs turned from the present, how can they hope to greet you? You're just like me, predicted for the very place we'll miss each other. Like lightning and thunder— though we come as one, we're revealed as two.
No products in the cart.