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

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Winter 1991 • Vol. XIII No. 1 • Poetry |

Improvisation

  And then I improvise color . . . and my brush goes between my fingers as a bow would on a violin, and absolutely for my own pleasure.
                                VAN GOGH, to his brother Theo

His mother has dressed our boy
in yellow, his favorite color.
Sandals slap on his heels as we walk
beneath crab apple trees.
The early sun burns orange
through mists from the lake,
he prods green nubbins
dropped in profusion along our way,
and all seems composed
by hands we never see.

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