I have just given myself a terrible fright. I knew I had a poem about shoes and, when I found it, I realised that it referred obliquely to my last (winning) entry to the Oldie and to a poem I workshopped on "met" a while ago. I am obsessed with unlovely feet and isosceles triangles.
I offer it, not to Tessa yet, because it's too long, but to Jayne, who was appalled when I "accused" her of wearing Cr*c*
Lady-shoes
You said you’d fancy me in lady-shoes
and pointed out a pair in a shop-window.
Seeing their sisters in an Oxfam shop
I summoned up the guts to try them on.
Sat on my arse, I squinted in a mirror.
I saw my foot and liked the look of it –
almost en pointe, supported on a pencil,
knobbly isosceles of a weird triangle.
I stood up slowly, peering down, amazed.
Lord, I was tall! Then gravity unnerved me;
I scuttled forward, sat down hastily,
muttered “I’ll take ’em” and slunk from the shop.
I braved them on the pavement. My feet teetered
as I reached for an invisible zimmer
and then leant backwards, overcompensating
with windmill arms and heels that pecked like ducks.
But for your sake I wore them into town.
You smiled when you saw that I’d done it, but
you sucked air when the heels caught in the cracks
and made me stagger like a drunken tart.
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