In Your New House
Sara Wallace
you wake to the sound of sweeping
open the front door
and across the road you see
a dozen women
sweeping the sand
the dirt
dry clipped grass
mud floors of huts
cement floors of teahouses
after months you join them
rising while your husband and child sleep
the broom’s thick handle rough in your palms
straw and mangy feathers tickling your feet
you don’t look at each other
or at the surf or the crows in the palm trees
you look down at the six inches in front of your bare feet
knocking the gritty sand bug carcasses
lemon peels loose threads out of the way
over the lip of the porch and into the high weeds
making the floor of the day good to be on
the air still blue and cool
like standing in the mouth of a cave
Sara Wallace is the author of The Rival (selected for the Agha Shahid Ali Poetry Prize) and the chapbook, Edge (selected for The Center for Book Arts Poetry Chapbook Competition). Her poetry has appeared in such publications as Agni, Hanging Loose, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poetry Daily, Yale Review and others. A recent finalist for a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award, she is a recipient of a grant from the Sustainable Arts Foundation and fellowships from the Virginia Center of the Creative Arts and the Millay Colony for the Arts. She currently teaches at New York University and lives in Brooklyn.