Read the winning piece of our 2025 Nonfiction Contest “Through the Mirror” by Jessie Cato selected by Lucy Ives.

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Nuar Alsadir

Poetry

Summer 2000

Deposit

By Nuar Alsadir

Sometimes water falls and leaves itself like blood in the basin, staining. That is when I remember, go out of the silence I’ve created, as a mouth unfolds to open […]

Poetry

Summer 2000

The Garden

By Nuar Alsadir

There is no garden, there never was. The man who cuts the grass is stealing, making promises with his Miracle-Gro and reeling in the fish. I want to believe in […]

Poetry

Summer 2000

Bats

By Nuar Alsadir

They live inside walls—not like you or the other rodents, but with wings and fangs, a clicking almost flamenco. And unlike you, they are not ashamed: they share their darkness […]

Poetry

Summer 2000

Aperture

By Nuar Alsadir

I close the wardrobe, it opens. I close the wardrobe, it opens. Is that the way it will always be,persistence as a form of flight; my summons the rising and […]