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

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Summer 1994 • Vol. XVI No. 3 • Poetry |

Insulin Shock

Dying again
and the blood secedes into my brain,
which becomes a yellow globe,
a red bulb on its ceiling
throbbing with some other life:

 a cell
 of stones
 a man there
 waiting to be hung
 looking out the window

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The Old Contract

By Lisa Bernstein

Forgive me for not fearing the ones who told me “You’re dying.” One of them stands in the corner of my bedroom, lifting her petticoat, which is dingy and smoke-tinged […]

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