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

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Summer 1965 • Vol. XXVII No. 3 • Poetry |

Observation Car and Cigar

Tranquility as his breath, his eye a camera
that believes, he follows rails that only last
one trip, then vanish. (Suppose America
tried and then was the West once more, but this time
no one found it? He has felt that much
alone.) Remembering with smoke, he uses
the haze as authentic (the authentic loves not kept
for display fade authentically and become
priceless, never to be exchanged). A silver
evening light follows the train silently
over a great bridge. Like a camera that
believes, he follows an arch into faded
authentic scenes that bring something presented again
and yet all new: traveling, our loves are brought
before us and followed securely into a new evening.

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