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The Kenyon Review

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

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Tributary

By Kevin McLellan

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The fire. It is a matter
of time. I belong

to the knives. And I

must have already.
My body will need

to surrender. Like spills

around the conifers.
When a lasting visitor

mirrors slowness

and up until now
darts across my red sky.

Kevin McLellan is the author of the chapbook Round Trip (Seven Kitchens, 2010), a collaborative series of poems with numerous women poets. He has recent or forthcoming poems in journals including Barrow Street, Colorado Review, Diagram, Hunger Mountain, Poetry East, House Review, Versal, and several others. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with two canaries and sometimes teaches poetry workshops at the University of Rhode Island in Providence.