Eleven or Twelve Ways of Looking at Shoes

1

Once this house
is sold it will be sold
time and time
again and shoes

2

Life is a long
thread Wallenda
longer than you knoow
and shoes.

3

I am out back when
crying stops
inside the faucet
when the leak
is fixed. When
my trunk is
bottomed-out your
shoe is there.

4

A man and a woman
and a blackbird are one but
only the former wear
shoes though they can’t
buy them very often and
sometimes discard them
all together.

5

Unshaven the cadillac man
wants him never more
scared or poor and shoes.

6

On a grassy knoll
bug a dead
president and brown
custom-built cordovans

7

With freckled arms the
younger sisters bear
the platinum one
home from high school.
Their shoes are beneath
their hearts and they
expect nothing.

8

My headlights flick
a raccoon’s flailing paws his
black stupid eyes; the candle
I burned
while we
made love.

9

Where there are shoes
there is Bob Dylan;
where there is Phil Collins
there are shoes.

10

She’s spatula’d herself
into the tiles and burned
herself to see
this her love in pans
and pots and black
shoes.

11

Abebe Bikila
you ran without shoes
Abebe Bikila
the sky was blue.