The Pushcart prize: best of the small presses

Introduction / Bill Henderson

As kingfishers catch fire / Colum McCann

A Hemingway story / Andre Dubus

The lectures on love / Edward Hirsch

The Revenant / Edward Falco

Grandmother, dead at 99 years and 10 months / William Matthews

The turkey stories / Julie Showalter

Thanksgiving / Martín Espada

Happiness / Bharati Mukherjee

The book of the dead man #87 / Marvin Bell

Splinters / Melvin Jules Bukiet

There goes the Nobel Prize / Carol Muske

Pornography / Angela Shaw

The bill collector's vacation / Patricia Hampl

Abundance / Carol Philips

Timeshare / Jeffrey Eugenides

Urban anthropology / Alec Wilkinson

Invisible dreams / Toi Derricotte

July / Beth Chimera

The weather they were written in / Kathy Fagan

The ninth, in E minor / Frederick Busch

Junk / Gordon Cavenaile

Zealous / Joshua Clover

The Burial / Steven Dixon

Mission poem / Tarin Towers

Let's not talk politics, please / John J. Clayton

The most responsible girl / Emily Fox Gordon

Carpe diem : time piece / Marilyn Krysl

Stupid girl / Louis Berney

Vandals, horses / Alan Michael Parker

Tea at the house / Meg Wolitzer

Autumnal / Mark Irwin

Bodysurfing / Richard Burgin

Two journeys / Philip Levine

Once a shoot of heaven / Beckian Fritz Goldberg

Valor / Richard Bausch.

Invocation / Marilyn Hacker

Bad boy number seventeen / Lucia Perillo

Histories of bodies / Mariko Nagai

In the midst of sisters / Jane McCafferty

Prayer / Grace Schulman

Cybermorphic beat-up get-down subterranean homesick reality-sandwich blues / Lance Olsen

O Eve / Rosemary C. Hildebrandt

Faithless / Joyce Carol Oates

Before the beginning : maybe God and a silk flower concubine perhaps / Pattiann Rogers

Direct male / Risa Mickenberg

Like God / Lynn Emanuel

The first annual performance art festival at the Slaughter Rock battlefield / Thomas M. Disch

Sad song / Laura Kasischke

The seven sisters / Aurelie Sheehan

The cup / Katrina Roberts

Blowing shades / Stuart Dybek

Earthly light / Marcia Southwick

Mr. Agreeable / Kirk Nesset

Eye shadows / Judith Taylor

The order of things / Nancy Richard

Meditation on an aphorism by Wallace Stevens : "A poem is a pheasant" / Jeffrey Harrison

Los Angeles, the angels / James Harms

Flower children / Maxine Swann

Sewing without mother : a zuihitsu / Kimiko Hahn

The old morgue / Francine Prose

Mis-sayings / Mary Kuryla

From Rosary / Barbara Tran

Girls like you / Jennifer Moses

Monologue of the falconer's wife / Colette Inez

Ernie's ark / Monica Wood

Lies / Martha Collins

Peace plan : meditation on the 9 stages of "peacemaking" as tribute to Senator Claiborne Pell : 1997 / Michael S. Harper

Descending / Mark Wisniewski

Blue Kashmir, '74 / Carol Muske

Special mention

Presses featured in the Pushcart Prize Editions since 1976

Contributors' notes

Contributing small presses

Index.