Pushcart prize XLIII, 2019 : best of the small presses / edited by Bill Henderson ; with the Pushcart prize editors.

Includes bibliographical references and author index.

Introduction / Bill Henderson -- What has irony done for us lately / Pam Houston -- The tornado auction / Karen Russell -- Into the mystery / Tony Hoagland -- The tell-tale heart / Anthony Marra -- The armed letter writers / Olufunke Ogundimu -- Carolyn / Steve Stern -- Dancing / Robert Hass -- Singular dream / Mary Ruefle -- What's wrong with you? What's wrong with me? / J.M. Holmes -- Lupinski / Myron Taube -- Yilan / Kristin Chang -- Murder tourism in middle America / Justin St. Germain -- The great meal / Jung Hae Chae -- The storm / Michael Collier -- Kylie wears balmain / Sarah Resnick -- Secrets deep in tiger forests / Poe Ballantine -- Barbie Chang wants to be someone / Victoria Chang -- A fish in the tree / John Landretti -- All politics / Jessica Burstein -- All politics / Jessica Burstein -- My hobby needed a hobby / Dana Roeser -- Spectral evidence / Victor Lavalle -- I love you but I've chosen darkness / Claire Voye Watkins -- Like someone asleep in a cinema / Mary Jo Bang -- Midwinter / D. Nurkse -- The bar beach show / Olabajo Dada -- Parachute / Maggie Smith -- A country scene / Rick Moody -- Face / Tom Sleigh -- The imagination resettlement program / Eli Barrett -- Christian soldiers / Hal Crowther -- BBHNN / Hal Crowther -- No time like the present / Gabriel Brownstein -- Skull / David Long -- Kernals / David J. Rothman -- A flock, a seige, a murmuration / Su-Yee Lin -- Bloody mary! bloody mary! bloody mary! / Andrew Mitchell -- The clearing / Allison Adair -- Guerrilla Marketing / Sanjay Agnihotri -- The wonder of the look on her face / Brian Doyle -- UDFJ-39546284 / Rick Barot -- Taco night / Julie Hecht -- I figure / Kim Chinquee -- Faith for my father circa 1980 / Erik Campbell -- The whitest girl / Brenda Peynado -- The hunter / Gabriel Daniel Solis -- One definition of time / Albert Goldbarth -- The wall / Robert Coover -- Iraq good / Hugh Martin -- Acceptance speech / David Naimon -- I kept getting books about birds / Catherine Pierce -- Let the devil sing / Allegra Hyde -- Wonder days / Nomi Stone -- The white road / Daniel Tobin -- A suburban weekend / Lisa Taddeo -- Autism screening questionnaire : speech and language delay / Oliver De La Paz -- Do I look sick to you? / C. J. Hribal -- Field theories / Samiya Bashir -- How do you raise a black child? / Cortney Lamar Charleston -- Pathetic fallacy / Emilia Phillips -- Quarry / Melissa Stein -- PEDAL, PEDAL, PEDAL / Heather Sellers -- KRA-DIN / Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah -- Blue coming / Thylias Moss -- Codeswitch decomposing into Lil Wayne Lyric / Julian Randall -- Transition : the renaming of hope / Molly Cooney -- Just the one episode / John Ashbery -- Monomoy / Carl Phillips -- He / Jane Mead -- From "interruptive" / Phillip Williams -- Brace yourself / Leslie Jill Patterson -- Powder house / Molly Gallentine.

"This year's gathering selected with the help of over 200 contributing editors and hundreds of small presses and literary journals."--Back cover.