Jane Zwart

Folding

Across the parking lot, a Texas Roadhouse
is coming down, and some of us watch
and some lower groceries into cars’ trunks.

I am thinking of the mirrors in the bathrooms.
I am thinking of the drop ceiling dropping
and of the salad bar’s sneeze guard 

and of the pulley designed to haul up
a Hobart’s walls from around a cube of steam.
Strange: even the enterprise we never loved 

leaves a hole. That, or it’s the apt, awful sound
of siding folding. Some of us watch.
Some of us grind our teeth in the night.

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Jane Zwart teaches at Calvin University and co-edits book reviews for Plume. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Threepenny Review, HAD and Ploughshares and her first collection of poems is coming out with Orison Books in fall 2025.