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

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Spring 1987 • Vol. IX No. 2 • Poetry |

Portrait: Woman, Aged Thirty, Posed on Flowered Couch

She thought the education of the soul
Came all at once, as it did
For Saul, lucky boy, trailed
By lightning until the right moment,
Crawling out from under his horse
With a new name and profession.
But daily the weather comes around,
And he who claims to love her
Is still there in the morning
Buttering toast, calling her yet
Another nonsensical name.

She thought the battles of the self
Were fought out in the old high style
And disposed of, leaving her
Dappled with virtue.
But she is regularly infected
By a mild self-love, a would-be martyr
Who dreams of the executioner’s knife
And wakes reverencing heathen gods
In her safe bed.

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Clare Rossini’s most recent book, Lingo, was published by the University of Akron Press. She is currently completing a collection that includes poems about science, technology, and climate change. She is artist-in-residence at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where she directs a program placing Trinity students in a public school arts classroom.

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