Spring 2002
Spring 2002
The Spring 2002 issue of Ploughshares, guest-edited by Cornelius Eady. Ploughshares, a journal of new writing, is guest-edited serially by prominent writers who explore different personal visions, aesthetics, and literary circles.
Edited by award-winning poet Cornelius Eady (Kartunes, Victims of the Latest Dance Craze), this issue features new works from Elizabeth Alexander, Terrance Hayes, Shreela Ray, Al Young, and Yolanda Wisher. Released after the September 11 attacks, Eady's introduction dwells on the aftermath of the event, the sensation of the amputee convinced that "when the smoke / clears [her legs] will be / standing." Though the works of the issue were written before the attacks, Eady expresses hope that they all exhibit "true human commerce, the witnessing of what has, and hopefully will continue, to go between us" in our worldwide trading of ideas. As Eady and his fellow New Yorkers waited, "scared and impatient… for the new 'normal'" after the attacks, this issue represented for Eady a preservation of past American culture before everything changed, something that he wanted to be remembered as we all progressed into an unknown future.
Introduction
Fiction
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Run Away, My Pale Love
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Trash Traders
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Iowa Winter
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The Good Times Are Killing Me
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Kudzu
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Native Sandstone
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Fictions
Poetry
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Billy Strayhorn Writes Lush Life
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Familiarity
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Academic in Traffic
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Names
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Blues, For Bill
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This Morning, After an Execution at San Quentin
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From a Glass House
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For My Unnamed Brother (1943-1943)
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Leavings
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Is There a Print
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The Zen of Alice
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En la calle San Sebastián
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Inheritance of Waterfalls and Sharks
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The Monsters at the Edge of the World
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Young Lovers on My Beach
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Days of 1999
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trans. of Hail to the Artist by Hédi Kaddour
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trans. of The Old Wife by Hédi Kaddour
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The Closet
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Goldsboro Narrative #45
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Going to Hear My Child's Heartbeat for the First Time--Part 2
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Grass
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Gospel of the Two Sisters
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A Postcard from Okemah
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freedom
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April
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Letter to Alice
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Sculpting the Head of Miles Davis
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Hail to the Artist
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The Old Wife
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Mercy
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Visiting My Mother's Grave
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In Hot Pursuit
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Matins
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Self-Portrait in Summer
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Winter After the Strike
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Tight Line
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The Woman Who Allowed Light to Have Its Way with Her
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Picking Up a Job Application
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Cutting Hair
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The Fall of the Roman Empire
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Cruelty
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One Way of Looking at Thirteen Sailboats
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Song of a Woman Feigning Sleep
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Flesh
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Jairus
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The Philospher's Name Was Misspelled Everywhere
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Graphology
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The Statues
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How People Disappear
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Orpheus Plays the Bronx
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The Absence of Light
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Small Deaths
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Packs Well
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The Owl
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The Star
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Widows: A Section of the Law Books
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I Never Had an Imaginary Friend
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Nola
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Assimilation
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Walk Right In
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With Rhyme and Reason
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Up Jumped Spring