The Shoe's Tale, Part II

The shoe went missing again last night. This time there was a clue, perhaps: a hellacious, snarling fight outside my bedroom window around midnight, followed by the smell of skunk spray fired at point-blank range. Today the whole house reeked of skunk, and so did my car -- even though it was nowhere near the fight.

After two rounds of searching, I finally found the shoe this afternoon under the back deck and fished it out of there with my nice swan-neck hoe. The shoe is none the worse for wear -- still gray and stiff and, as always after one of these abductions, laced tight to within an inch of its life. Once again, the intruder stole the right shoe. The left one has never been shoenapped.

Poem: A Parking Lot

I stayed kissed.

I said god, god

of the glacier letting go,

god that made the mouths

of Connecticut Valley men

strong after all that

rough weather. Hands

in your pockets, I pulled

you in. The air snapped

its ten-degree

fingers. Couldn’t tell

if every crackmoney tramp 

in town was yours

already, but then—black sky,

blue stars, naked heat

at the fingertip hollow 

of your neck—

that was home,

that was here.

I live there now.

I stayed.

(appeared in Northwest Review, 2008)

The Shoe's Tale

I have a mystery. Twice now, some animal has dragged one of my gardening shoes off into the yard at night, swiping it from its usual spot on the back deck. Always the same shoe—the right one. I find it in the morning in some far-flung corner of the yard. There are signs of a struggle: The shoe is filthy, its laces are pulled tight so it looks pinched and strangled, and they’re gray and stiff with what I can only assume is spit.

     I’ve never caught the animal red-handed, so I can only theorize what animal it is, and why it keeps taking my shoe.

     1) It’s a gang of deer who hate humans, and the smell of that shoe just gets their blood boiling. To hell with you humans and your deer fence and your shoe and your shoelaces! We will rip your bloody shoelaces out by the roots! And then we’ll kick down your deer fence and then you won’t be able to put on your shoe so you won’t be able to fix the fence. And then we can eat all the tomatoes we want. Damn, these shoelaces are strong.

     2) It’s a cat who is thrilled to bits that someone has left two perfectly good shoes out in the open. This yard is like a land of miracles—the shoes keeps reappearing, always in the same place. At home, the humans are all very fuss-fuss about putting their shoes in a closet and shutting the door. Whenever the cat makes a grab for a shoelace there, it’s a freakin’ national emergency. There was only that one ruined shoe that one time; it’s not like they didn’t have another.

     3) It’s a raccoon mom who is teaching her kids how to be clever thieves. The lesson always starts off so well—look here! A pair of shoes!—but then descends into chaos and unintentional comedy as she tries to drag the shoe across the deck and into the yard. Jesus, the noise! This heist will wake the dead. And if she gets busted, the kids will never let her forget it. And then one of them—the little wiseacre—says, “But Mom, what will we do with a shoe anyway?” And she realizes—slowly, but with utter clarity and conviction—that she has given birth to children who have no imagination. But by then it’s almost dawn and they’re all full of leftover Mexican food anyway. They will go home and dream of corn tortillas and small banditos.

     The next day I put on my spitty, dirty shoe—that’s why God made socks—and am back in the garden, trying to tell what’s weeds and what’s lettuce. Afterward, I leave the shoes on the porch. In a way, it’s an honor that they’ve been touched by something wild. And, like all of us, they may one day be taken out of the yard, borne off to some other grand adventure. Who am I to hold them back?

Poem: Daughter

Fortune: You will receive a compliment 

from a stranger on Friday

Stranger, was that you

ordering tacos to go

at the long glass counter

steamed with beans and beef,

your daughter in tow,

her hair a weedy lot

betraying her mother gone,

a father with no heart to comb?

There’ll be time enough for chance

in ten or twelve years 

when you’re home alone,

Danny Gatton on the stereo,

a bill from her college

a landmine you found

in the mailbox, this black hole

you birthed—every drink

and dollar and man

falling ever in to her.

And you were lost yourself,

a blue star trailing a train of light,

only visible a moment

that night in the taqueria

as you turned—was it 

my jacket, my earrings?—

before she pulled you back,

you with a laugh for her,

her hair such a godly mess,

her face so bright

she could burn you alive.

(appeared in Northwest Review, 2008)

Poem: Forgetting the Moon

The moon climbed into this poem.

I tried to ignore it

but it looked in through the window

one night and woke me up.

It was throwing all this light

and the snow was soaking it in

and if light were a noise,

the whole backyard

would be talking.

Sometimes for months entire

I forget about the moon. The sky

is an empty pail. How

can the moon come calling

when it has so much to do?

Lovers and tides

will not raise themselves.

But it climbed, I tell you,

in through a closed window,

and if that is too much

of a metaphor, I give you also

my heart, that old lady

in her cold walk-up.

Even she saw the moon —

she has windows, too, you know —

and though it didn’t make

the headlines — moon shines in

through somebody’s window —

I wrote it down

so if you please,

it can happen.

It happened to me.

(appeared in Mudfish, 2009)