Other Poets/Other Poems

Anonymous, Issue 17

Antler, Issue 36

Amy Beeder, Issue 16

Boyd W. Bensen, Issue 31

Donna Biffar, Issue 15

Kimberly Blaeser, Issue 27

P. W. Boisvert, Issue 39

Rick Cannon, Issue 28

Jared Carter, Issue 24

David Chorlton, Issue 40

Billy Collins, Issue 1, Issue 18

Steven Coughlin, Issue 39

Philip Dacey, Issue 6

Denise Duhamel, Issue 13

Stephen Dunn, Issue 34

Stuart Dybek, Issue 41

Dave Etter, Issue 14

Norma Hammond, Issue 22

David Hernandez, Issue 23

Susan Holahan, Issue 12

Angela Just, Issue 32

Lisa Kadous, Issue 20

Julie King, Issue 30

Lyn Lifshin, Issue 19

Mary Lucina, Issue 26

Louis McKee, Issue 5

Pamela Miller, Issue 8

Lisel Mueller, Issue 29

Alexis Orgera, Issue 35

James Reiss, Issue 26

Len Roberts, Issue 2

Kristopher Saknussemm, Issue 10

R. T. Smith, Issue 38

Cathy Song, Issue 21

Judith Valente, Issue 37

Charles Harper Webb, Issue 25

Mary Ann Waters, Issue 11

J. D. Whitney, Issue 33

Bayla Winters, Issue 3

Lila Zeiger, Issue 4

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Seeing Their Shoes

"Of course you'd be a shoe fetishist the youngest in a large family is always
looking at the shoes of the grownups." --Alan Dugan

Especially the spectators, toes and backs usually patent.
All those holes in their tiny saw teeth
where pools of white would well.

And pearl buttons on opera pumps,
their bumpy silver centers like firm little nipples
straining to keep the straps filled.

Oxfords appraising me with hard metal eyelets,
their long stares relaxing only with
laces undone, disheveled.

Spike heels, malevolent, sensual, heady with
balance in high places. Old carpet slippers, easy
and slovenly like a long relationship.

My own high black buttoned shoes,
from the store with Doctor in front of its name where the bones
of my feet joined like puzzle pieces
under the ghostly glare of the fluoroscope.

Wedges, wing tips, walled toes, welts.
Grommets, aglets, ghillies, buckles.
Marcasite clips, Puritan bows.
Shanks, quarters, ankle straps.
Tongues, arches, vamps.

I would run about the living room in my sensible shoes,
back and forth to please them, to pick the victrola records
before I could read—"Jada," Caruso, Harry Lauder—
to dance and their bidding, ready to
slither and slide on laps, knees, ankles,

While inside their leather masks those five-headed
monsters kept time, panting and sweating and
huffing their terrible breath, ready to
crush me and stomp me at one false move,
on step out of line.

--Lila Zeiger
Copyright © 2001 by Free Lunch Arts Alliance