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

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Jan/Feb 2017 • Vol. XXXIX No. 1 • Poetry |

Portrait & Shadow

The curtains sail into the room with the memory of presence behind them

while my father waits in the dark taking apart what is left of his former selves,
    like a pianist, drunk at the keys, playing the same four notes,

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Cruelties

By Kevin Prufer

A young man behind the garage spraying a wasps’ nest until the wasps grow heavy and dumbdripping from the gutter            and still he sprays until their curled black bodies decorate […]

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