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Shoe RepairI've always lovedShoe repair shops Where worn heels, soles, and tongues Words with a double meaning Are repaired, and made new The old woman tells me Maybe the stetl was better-- Everyone knew Everyone, there was no Loneliness My mother remembers How in shoe stores in the Thirties You could X-ray your feet In a special machine, innocent Of cancer and radiation See the bones Right there in the store See inside yourself! Virtue follows me As I take my second husband's Black shoes in for repair Pick them up Chaste as virtue in a bag of brown paper My second mother-in-law Considers buying a painting A single bed, pillow and coverlet Luminous beneath a ray of light Speaking of widowhood, death, a sensuality, childbed Or a solitude Enclosed in stars. |
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Issue #12, November, 1999 :
Santa Fe Poetry Broadside.