Best of Prairie schooner: fiction and poetry

Introduction / Hilda Raz

Larabi's Ox / Tony Ardizzone

Maggie of the Green Bottles / Toni Cade Bambara

The Eve of the Spirit Festival / Lan Samantha Chang

Nebraska / Ron Hansen

The Washing Machine / Ivan Klima

The Assailant / Joyce Carol Oates

First Views of the Enemy / J.C. (Joyce Carol) Oates

Stop Frame / Marlene Nourbese Philip

Watermelon Seeds / Susan Power

An Evening Meal / Reynolds Price

The Dowry / Richard Russo

The Old Farmhouse and the Dog-wife / Susan Fromberg Schaeffer

What I Did for Love / Lynne Sharon Schwartz

Boston Year / Elizabeth Alexander

Wake / Sherman Alexie

Toward Conception / Sherman Alexie

Commissary / A.R. Ammons

Poison / David Baker

Astrological Guide / Charles Baxter

In the Days of Awe / Robin Becker

Shaken After Receiving a Letter from a Miami Poet with a Mean Tongue Who Doesn't Want a Bridge to Cuba / Ruth Behar

The Clock Shoe / Sandra Berris

Love Talk / Michael J. Bugeja

the laughing heart / Charles Bukowski

Musee / Scott Cairns

Cuban Poetry / Rafael Campo

The 10,000th AIDS Death in San Francisco / Rafael Campo

Botanical Nomenclature / Amy Clampitt

The Changeling / Judith Oritz Cofer

Claims / Judith Ortiz Cofer

The Woman Who Was Left at the Altar / Judith Ortiz Cofer

Running / Martha Collins

Husband and Wife / Peter Cooley

Letting the Grounds Settle / Jim Daniels

I Visit the Prosthesis Lady / Helene Davis

For My First Grade Teacher and Her Special Messenger / Toi Derricotte

Family Secrets / Toi Derricotte

What to Accept / Tom Disch

The Other Side of the House / Rita Dove

Father, Mother, Robert Henley Who Hanged Himself in the Ninth Grade, Et. Al / Stephen Dunn

Walt Whitman Mall / Cornelius Eady

Anger / Cornelius Eady

Dracula / Lynn Emanuel

What I Know About the End of the Second World War / Lynn Emanuel

A Bird Flies into the Room and Then Flies Out Again / John Engman

The Return / Louise Erdrich

Two Sisters / Jane Flanders

Apple Rind / Carol Frost

Cathay / Patricia Goedicke

"Jeff" of "Mutt and Jeff" Leans on Air / Albert Goldbarth

Repeated Sightings / Albert Goldbarth

from Open Windows / Marilyn Hacker

To a Youngish Professor Who Has Waxed Eloquent Over Certain Students / Rachel Hadas

Friday Night / Linda Hogan

Such Beauty / Jonathan Holden

For Johannes Edfelt / David Ignatow

For Rose / David Ignatow

Hope / Richard Jackson

Sardines / Phyllis Janowitz

Outside / Mark Jarman

Numbers / Allison Joseph

As the President Spoke / Ted Kooser

The Riddle of Noah / Maxine Kumin

A History Poem / Alice Lee

Exact Change / David Lehman

Singing Miriam's Lament / Cynthia Macdonald

Letting Go / Walter McDonald

Noise and a Few Words / Judson Mitcham

Will / Judith Moffett

Coatlicue's Rules: Advice from an Aztec Goddess / Pat Mora

Hearing Impairment / Les A. Murray

Cold Snap / Leonard Nathan

The Revised Version / Howard Nemerov

The Sky Is Full of Blue and Full of the Mind of God / Kathleen Norris

No One Thinks of Tegucigalpa / Naomi Shihab Nye

Unreconstructed / Ed Ochester

The Moment / Sharon Olds

Maria Mitchell in the Great Beyond with Marilyn Monroe / Carole Simmons Oles

Maria's Ghost Addresses Hawthorne Concerning Chapter Five of The Marble Faun, in Which She Appears / Carole Simmons Oles

Howard / Mary Oliver

Surviving / Alicia Ostriker

The Weekend Gardener / Eric Pankey

A Craving for Salt / Linda Pastan

Employment Alternatives / Michael Pettit

Edith Piaf Dead / Alberto Rios

Rolling Naked in the Morning Dew / Pattiann Rogers

Crushed: Chapter Nine / Liz Rosenberg

All Be Riders / Hillel Schwartz

Exquisite Incumbent / Maureen Seaton and Denise Duhamel

The Pornography Box / Dave Smith

Chisme at Rivera's Studio / Gary Soto

Agatha's Butterfly / Marcia Southwick

Yes, Think / Ruth Stone

On First Looking into Diringer's The Alphabet: A Key to the History of Mankind / Stephanie Strickland

As told to me / Terese Svoboda

I Have Lost the Address of My Country / Karen Swenson

First Sex / Richard Tayson

Three Dreams of Disaster / Chase Twichell

Star Reader

Palm Reader / Reetika Vazirani

White Elephants / Reetika Vazirani

The Pregnant Lady Playing Tennis / Karen Volkman

Peacock Display / David Wagoner

Sailor's Daughter / Diane Wakoski

The Hell Mural / Ronald Wallace

The Way of Tet / Brace Weigl

The Deaf Crone / James L. White

Lies Between Fires / Peter Wild

Facing into It / Eleanor Wilner

After / David Wojahn.