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

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Fall 2009 |

Glass

I was fixed in him; glass would not stream from itself.

I took the window down; the woods now

other woods surrounding. I took myself to a class on Berry Street.

The place for him inarticulate. Tandem, the teacher took me along the metal

rod to river

in glass, the oven. She fished; she knew how much time; I followed.

Swooning the molten glass out high on the rod.

Wrists, wrists, wrists (she said) rolling the rod across my lap.

Someone else kissed, someone else lodged it.

I rowed in a scarred wooden cup.

Photo of Elaine Bleakney
Elaine Bleakney is a poet and writer living in the mountains of Western North Carolina. Her book of poems, Take the Exit Then Exit, is forthcoming from Understory Books in spring 2026. Her books include For Another Writing Back (Sidebrow Books, 2014), an avant-memoir in lyric prose; the chapbook 20 Paintings by Laura Owens (Poor Claudia, 2013), an ekphrastic conversation; and the tear-apart anthology Poem in Your Pocket (Abrams, 2009), which she edited.