Recently added articles from Prairie Schooner:
From Bridge of Sand.(Excerpt)(Novel)
Dec 22, 2008; ... <Text rich="yes"> What next?Even the most immobilizing loss rests on a substrata of possibility. America felt the tectonic slippage and called it moving on. Love surged from the epicenter and rigidified. The anthrax paranoia peaked and subsided. The Guardian Angels took to the ...
Like Ours.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2008; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Italic>Ninety two students and three nuns died in a school fire ill Chicago on December 1, 1958</Italic> . <Preformatted type="other"> For days, after the fire, we talked about Our Lady of the Angels school, how boys And girls like us had died in their ...
Judas Horse.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2008; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> Early morning, the broken surf, we awake to stiffening cries. The mare is shot in the water. When hurt, animals recall each other; the wounded horse becomes the cat, then the catbird's wails. All season, the sand seeded with squid or whale or ...
The Flood.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2008; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> The fava drowned and then the tomatoes. Each rose in the lap of our blessings, after so much drought, our answer, the rain changing the earth like a chemical boom: solid be liquid, liquid be ever. <Italic>That be a dollar</Italic> , said the ...
Fear of Heights.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2008; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Italic>After Andrew Wyeth's "Widow's Walk"</Italic> <Preformatted type="other"> A widow's walk will go to your head like the sight of a former boyfriend pulling up in a two-toned Alpha--sunglasses and a baseball cap, he patiently waits while you study ...
Anna Kuerner.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2008; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Italic>After Andrew Wyeth's "Ground Hog Day"</Italic> <Preformatted type="other"> The painter who wanders your house night and day, sketches and paints his way in and out your back door, kitchen, barn, and milking room, he's erased all trace of you ....
Seafarer.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2008; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Italic>After Andrew Wyeth's "Adrift"</Italic> <Preformatted type="other"> That's Walt Anderson napping in the narrow berth of the slim-hulled skiff, arms folded neat as a bishop across his chest. All the warmth of mid-day settles into the ribbed place ....
Not Speaking History.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2008; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> No, I'll take that one. At the front of the case, in the present tense. Was she really Chekhov's niece? And sitting beside Hitler? So much for fraternization, with the whole of France bankrupt-- in Paris all the shutters close across from me-- do ...
Time Being What It Is.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2008; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"><Italic>When sliding on ice, steer into the curve. It may save your life, or mine. And don't forget what I told you, In its outer limits, probability includes the improbable.</Italic> The scented flower of white dawn opened into rain as I ...
The Most Beautiful Man.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2008; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> You were the most beautiful man in Herzliya. Dried figs and pears, a modernist view of the sea-- After rain the trees looked silken. When you touched my back, I jumped up at the electric charge. The new planet was officially named Jerusalem. ...
Back to Old Mhaigh Eo.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2008; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Italic>On the night of December 11, 1920, an armed and authorized mob combined of Black and Tans and Auxiliaries burned a good bit of Cork City to the ground. This--with its attendant pillaging, looting, and violence inflicted upon a civilian population--drove ...
John Early Wonders, Waiting Dawn.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2008; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Italic>The steamer</Italic> Cambria <Italic>was lost on its return from New York off the north coast of Donegal on October 19, 1870. About 180 passengers and crew were drowned.</Italic> <Preformatted type="other"> "What is the difference, then, between a ...
In Ireland, Meeting the Ghosts.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2008; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> Because our laundry, even the thinnest nightgown, was still two days damp, the pants and jackets joined us for the evening. Draped about the cottage, bored by our conversation, they began to commune with presences peeling themselves from the ...
Rhododendron Glade, Kew Gardens.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2008; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> During the mid-May flower show you'd think the royal gardeners had found an elixir to force blossoms or hung a million of the most exquisite dreams, all the bushes big as houses full of neighbors you've always liked: the flamboyant Fuchsias who ...
From a Deep Place.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2008; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> Their son has sent them letters rich with oxygen and limestone, such dark no word will ...
Dear God.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2008; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> The neighbor playing on the pile of slag cuts his breath short for you. Birds grow new wings. We came this far to throw the earth away like night sky, where once we knew the stories, star to star, until they warned about ourselves. The neighbor ...
Arrangements.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2008; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> Once every spring the yard comes together and our older selves, in the sun's lull, lean into each other on the bench, where we still whistle back at cardinals and worry, in an idle way, about delphinium and hosta, the best depth for mulch, ...
Sometimes a True Story.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2008; ... <Text rich="yes"> from <Italic>Elementary Science by Grades, Book 3</Italic> , edited by Frank Ballou, 1925 <Preformatted type="other"> Sometimes when it is cold, the fruit stays on the tree long into winter. A true story is told. Men say only a few words, guide their ships by the ...
The Bus.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2008; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> A woman stands motionless in the street. Her blouse is dark gold, her shoes deep blue. Buildings rise behind her, whitening into sky. A woman stands motionless in the middle of the street. Her coat is open, her stockings torn where her knees ...
Cast.(Poem)
Dec 22, 2008; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Italic>Suppose the past could be surprised</Italic> --William Matthews <Preformatted type="other"> After Pompeii's snarling dogs we descend the long ramp into Heraculaneum, circling this moaning deconstruction, with diced mosaic, laced chariot ...