Sara Wainscott’s work appears in DIAGRAM, The Journal Petra, Powder Keg, BOAAT, Fairy Tale Review, The Collapsar, Dream Pop Journal, and elsewhere. She is a finalist for the 2017 National Poetry Series and appears on the New City “Lit 50 2017” list of people who promote literature in Chicago. She co-curates Wit Rabbit, an intergenre reading series.
Last Warm Day
Whenever anyone walks past my desk, I act like I’m not reading
teenage fashion blogs. Nobody knows the name of the man
who sits by the copy machine. Outside, the changing leaves
look dipped in nacho cheese. My daughter’s pointing to the sky:
those planes don’t have cannons so they can’t shoot us full of bombs
she wants me to know. Every year when I was growing up
my mother would sigh: I can’t remember a more beautiful fall.