Pushcart 2026 L: Francine Witte, “Plate Spinner” (non-fiction) from  New World Writing Quarterly, April 2024

I was probably eleven when my father started spinning plates. He’d been watching The Ed Sullivan Show and in between Petula Clark and Sergio Franchi, there was a man, all tuxed-up, spinning fifteen plates, five in the air on spindly sticks, five on the table, as he ran back and forth to keep everything going at once. The orchestra, trumpet-heavy, behind him, the audience’s rippled applause. Sometimes we lose our way. And sometimes we find another way. It may not be the best way; it may in fact be a terrible way. But it accomplishes something that the best way couldn’t. The narrator is an adult looking back at the reality of her family life when she was eleven years old. One minute Dad was the typical suburban businessman, the next he’s sitting in a leather chair six months after his broken leg heals. A “crappy job” can do that to you. It’s the other side of Willy Loman. And then he sees the plate spinners. Pushcart 2018 featured a short story by Steve Stern, “The Plate-Spinner”, a…