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SAra Wallace

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Above Jay Street

Your days have gotten so long—
eating dry toast at the dark window
watching a double-parked truck
shuddering on the pavement,
the rising sun silvering a peanut
of oil between its tires. Then,
twelve hours later, coming home
tired from work, that same smudge
still shiny under a streetlamp.
That whole time, what happened?
You can’t remember a single
phone call, just one second
two hours ago when your heart—
like a passenger trapped
in a glass elevator— went up fast
because walking between towers
you saw a brown confetti of dead
leaves in the blue sky, swirling
and tumbling together in the breezeway,
shucked and torn but still dancing,
dozens of them, above Jay Street.

Sara Wallace (She/her) is the author of The Rival (University of Utah Press). Her poetry has appeared in such publications as Agni, Hanging Loose, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poetry Daily, Yale Review and others.  As a neurodivergent person with low-frequency hearing loss, she enjoys advocating for people with disabilities however she can. She currently teaches at New York University and lives in Queens.

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