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

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Summer 2004 • Vol. XXVI No. 3 • Poetry |

Azaleas

It was a town so quiet, the mailman was empty-handed.
Why then nostrils of bloom, breathing so pinkly?

Even the town crier had taken a vow of silence.
Why at the house’s edge, beneath a wide-eyed window?

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Photo of Cate Marvin

Cate Marvin has published four books of poems, most recently Event Horizon (Copper Canyon Press, 2022). She teaches at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York, and lives in Southern Maine.

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Introduction

By Cate Marvin

All of the entrants in the Patricia Grodd Poetry Prize for Young Writers contest should know that it was very hard for me to choose these runners-up and a winner. […]

Pleasure

By Cate Marvin

I enjoy not sleeping next to you. I love not lying beside you in bed. Particularly delicious is not waking up beside you. Hours wander by like bears rummaging trash, […]

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