November 2024
Penelope Moffet
penstemon1@gmail.com
penstemon1@gmail.com
Bio Note: Occasionally I publish a poem somewhere, truly believing it's done, only to decide later that it needs more work. This poem, published by The Ekphrastic Review in 2018, is one of those poems. I am grateful to a Rattlecast prompt of this past spring, to take an old poem and rewrite it from a radically different perspective, which led me to letting a painted shoe speak for itself. The earlier version of the poem, and the painting on which it is based, can be found here
Boris Gourevitz's Shoe (The Shoe Speaks)
After Mac McClain, 1953
Shadows fall
on sun-flecked leaves
at my arch,
on fish swimming
over toes,
fragments lurking
in the dark,
rising as dust motes,
as electric particles,
or falling like
sand through a jar.
My heel’s a stack of bones.
Rosiness runs through me
from crimson at toe joints
to garnet under laces,
like the red that poured
from Boris’ leg
when shrapnel hit him
over Germany, took
four inches from one calf.
The Canadian government
paid for land in Mexico,
for classes at the art school
where Boris uses
hand tools to sculpt
the hardest, densest stone
that he can find.
No matter if it takes a century
to shape each curve,
he thinks he’s won
another life,
he thinks he has the time.
Originally published, in different form, at The Ekphrastic Review
©2024 Penelope Moffet
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