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

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Winter 1958 • Vol. XX No. 1 • Poetry |

For Hart

The night is lamped with powerful beauty,
and the oaks tremble with strange song.
Ancestral seas tide to our windows,
and the round government burns at our eyes.

Inheriting hands turn these sea-wet pages,
and stroke this raging reaching mind
that rides the unexplored expanse
in rich black evocating vessels.

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