Moore - Red shoes: poems

ALSO BY HONOR MOORE Darling: Poems The White Blackbird:
A Life of the Painter Margarett Sargent
by her Granddaughter Memoir: Poems Mourning Pictures (play) Editor Amy Lowell: Selected Poems The New Womens Theatre:
Ten Plays by Contemporary American Women W. W. NORTON & COMPANY NEW YORK LONDON
Adjusting type size may change line breaks. Landscape mode may help to preserve line breaks. for the man in the dark C ONTENTS DISPARU T ANGO A man crosses a street. The red glove Pulls him toward her Down into him Its like water falling.

So any years outside The circle A ring her mouth would make. He falls back. She knows how it would be He cries out. She makes him cry out. A UBADE The south wind is presented as an eagle no matter what she does to draw him as heated sky, open daisy, an elm where there are no elms. She wears night gloves to water flowers that bloom only in the dark, whose scent rifles her sleep, whose petals close at the hint of light.

At his gold cry, the roosters crown flares: voluminous horizon window opening, a parade of child soldiers. This is what she dreamed before waking, before his feet undid her bashfulness and day opened like an egg. H OTEL B RINDISI The glass door was spinning panes like an open book. A suit the color of sky close to night, wire of eyeglasses a gold moon. He bowed as if judicial and called a French name. Glasses were filled with ice the color of amber.

We were in America. He asked me to take his hands. They are cold, he said. I warmed his cold hands as we sat on the rouge banquette. It was the last May of the century. His eyes looked at my face.

His hand fell to the glacier of my thigh and held on. My gold tail swam dark green water, the ocean smelled of gardenia. Outside on the avenue people scurried to their palaces, wearing sunglasses, carrying shiny bags. S UMMER In her garden birds bewail the singe of absence. It was almost five, the brick wall greened by a veil of moss, artifact of city heat. The dog noses her face toward movement of air, half the windows long dead.

As you drove the Hudson, swans from a promontory, clouds glowering as your gaze pulled at the root of the island. What did we look like talking money and heartbreak? Fire escapes zigzag brick, balconies barred with spiraled iron. Make a note: Beneath the windows, water stained the brick. Assume years of air dulled the color almost white. H OMAGE I have straight hair and I wore Purple tonight and orange But I saw no man on the street I could desire, though I looked. I have one on my bedside table And a phone, also white plastic The light on, white lampshade And a nightgown, white too.

It shimmers under the purple lamp, I turn it on with a switch. The sky was so blue today You could cut it. My hair is straight But the hair on my pubis curls After a bath and so does The telephone cord that dangles White in the dark. My night table is mahogany Its drawers have crystal knobs. The lamp is glass, its finial brass. Ive kept it a very long time.

F ANTASIA Hours before sun enfolds the city heartbreak wings a traverse until at my hip it rests exhaling its dissonant aria, coloratura diphthongs leaping, dipping, veering all the way to aspirin. The sky is almost saturated with color though its center is blank, something serious and opposite tipping inward so no one approaches. Well stop at the rise in the road where it all vanishes behind a meadow, ermine or swaths of green, but I keep track of green. This is my favorite place, he said, and I looked out. Oh dear, Ive forgotten to feed you. Someone else takes the baby as he begins his walk through glass, leaves darkening, sun raw out evening windows, the river drowning as rain sweeps, everything white as if on fire.

This time the rims of his eyes are gold, his weight almost comforting as he hangs from my neck like a shawl, ladder of violet diamonds loosening at last. Im hungry, he whispers. I dream an empty bridge, light restored to the city, a bandstand spangled with candles, and dressed in azure, the violinist alone, playing her heart out. J ANUARY L IGHT January a week gone, and I can tell Already springs a glint, almost an idea: Melt, freeze, meltslipping, you dip Even fall as daylight widens and I Saunter through dusks that lean, Lurch, break, hallucinating sunshine. Atmospheric this leap for heatdizzy raj, Pashasnowdrop, crocus, aria Intent to bless, to heal the maim North wind has gorged. Oh winter engine Eke out this dark before your end begins.

T HE R OBBERY The sky turned purple, bright purple so I wasnt sure if it was real or part of my dreamthe train, all of us on a train traveling through the mountains, a strange landscape, the sky pale, everything dark against it. Columns, trees bright green, and then a clock tower built of brick that resembled ivory, face gold in the coming night, baroque horses rampant, pearlescent beyond the dusky indigo. I had stolen her jewelry and now I was willing to return it. The train stopped beneath the burnished portico, but only for a moment, long enough for me to hand amethysts to the tall bartender who thanked me in Italian. Donald lay nearly asleep, refusing to watch the changing sky or look at the architecture, gesture of a city long kept from us. The end of sun burned the horizon as we ate around a table the color of violins.

Yes, I rememberhorses fearful, foam at their mouths as they rear; the clock, enormous; the roofs verdigris, glittering at moon rise. D OORWAY My hand black when held up to reluctant Lean against me A walk in the dark. Here. I had to stumble Hands. Lean against me B LUES FROM B ED The blue cup Landscape of blue mountain, yellow cloud Blue bowl on the shell pink shelf And a blue goat Blue book at the end of a shelf On the first day of the new year A new self Blue sky out the window, white snow Sun striping indigo Blue eye tilted or open Of love, inadvertent Lid recedes up cornea like a wave Sleeving back to blue Smoothed ripple sheen of ocean Above a gentian mountain You are my sky Blue roof, marks for windows At the end of the shelf a blue book Than which no other book Is as blue, bluer Than glistery eyeskin Nearly the turquoise certain days ocean is. Blue at some distances unblues, Creeps up beach Bodies in water or love Rub of blue glue on a girls dove.

I like blue and white porcelain Ginger jar lamp, sugar bowl Your black eye is actually blue Loosened blood slid Blue under pale skin, as a cup Sky, eye. As blue as up. N EW S HOES She wore them with silk and black sheers, Her winter legs twin moons under lace New shoes, handmade, gleaming, polished As a lake at twilight or a new mirror: Fashioned for men, but cut for a woman. He wanted her, he said, wearing those shoes. Dreaming as they measure her shoeless, A cobbler in Florence, his tape shearing Her foot, no question a woman Requires such shoes. Wear them with lace, Signora, offering brush and polish.

The saddles rough, but the toe will mirror All he undoes, her each gesture mirror His guiding one, as she rises in shoes Made for holding ground, for polished Floors, for business in suits and sheers. When I wear them, she muses, will he unlace And unravel me? Take have and woman Me? His hands open her skirt, manning And mixing until her face is his mirror, Till he seats and unties her, untangling laces, Loosening, pulling, prizing back shoe Edge, cherry insoles flushed, he shears The tongue from each sweat-polished Instep. Forthright now, as if polishing, She fingers his face, pale as a womans In fugitive streetlight, her hands sheer Contentment, his eyes closed in the mirror Hers are. Kick, he says, off with the shoes! She does, fingers through his like lacing, And his hand breaks from hers, unlaces Stocking from garter, quick as a polish Cloth snapping. Take off your shoes, She says. I want you naked as a woman.