Ploughshares Spring 2020 - Edited by Tracy K. Smith

This Spring 2020 Edition of Ploughshares really delivered on the poetry front. The crazy thing about poetry is how many different feelings and looks you can get in reading a handful of poems. Perhaps it seems like you could read them faster than a novel, but when you switch to a new poem you have to recalibrate your brain and expectations and feelings every time.

This edition had some great poems. Some of my favorites:

Beer Run by Jared Harel
Love Song with Contradictions by Ellen Kombiyil
Daughter by Danusha Lameris - "I always wanted a daughter, which is to say, I wanted a better self" wow.
Slither by Danusha Lameris - "That was when I knew I'd become a stranger to the world."
After the Funeral by Roger Reeves

As for Fiction
The West We Leave by Kailyn McCord was a post apocalyptic tale of an abandoned California following massive and sustaining earthquakes. I always love a good tale that imagines what will happen if the world completely changes.

Dead Horn by Kirstin Valdez Quade was a great story about a family coping in the aftermath of a parent's death and the way circumstances can bend familial roles when trying to account for an absence.

Plastic Knives by Koye Oyedeji was so intriguing in its development of the story about an elderly lady waiting for her caregiver to take her to the park, but gets a completely different unexpected visitor.

And finally, in Nonfiction

What Money Can't Buy by Dawn Lundy Martin about a back to school shopping trip between an aunt and her nieces. What is the role of a prosperous aunt to her nieces living in less than ideal circumstances? How much will one shopping trip change their outlook and expectations for life?

4/5 Stars.