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

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Winter 1988 • Vol. X No. 1 • Poetry |

Villanelle: Success Story at Sea

And this shall be the acid test:
   to nail our colors to the mast
because the last shall be the best.

What never was so well expressed
   though often thought of, in the past;
and this shall be the acid test;

that north or south, or east or west,
   let the gale blow Force Twelve, stand fast,
because the last shall be the best.

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Was he ill? Living in the empty house, in the one room, in the wind-peopled house, windows and doors continually creaked; a garrulous fire; jackdaws on the roof tree muttered […]

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