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

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Summer 1953 • Vol. XV No. 3 • Poetry |

The Noble Man

An Olympian before the Olympics, that inhuman backdrop.
The possible man, it is him I posit, him preempt,
The not incalculable master of the braced mountains.
He does not have to lose himself in them. His spirit
Creates their newest hazard as idyllic only.
He has confronted man, Olympian of the dark mark.

Rage is the substratum of pure animal poise;
A strenuosity, exquisite, roves in the controlled eye;
Multiple actions, muted, gaze upon the world;
Leaping tensions exhale the formidable and graceful;
Masterworking modulations enter every day;
Oval kingdoms quell the old volcanoes.

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