Red Shoes

Heels tapped on the pavement,
cracked red patent flashed ’Stop!’
but she could only go
despite the pinch on her little toe
and the blisters rubbed raw
by red shoe leather,
lucky pumps borrowed
from her sister.
No shoes of her own,
no trainers, boots or sandals to her name;
everything sold to fund her habit,
to keep her sane. If only she’d read
that story to the end, she might know what to do
about the tight squeeze of a red shoe.

Kim M. Russell, 5th April 2018

Image result for hein heckroth the red shoes
Sketch by Hein Heckroth for The Red Shoes directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger – image found on Pinterest

My response to The Poetry School NaPoWriMo Prompt for Day 5: The Talisman, also linking to dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night.

Linking up again to What’s Going On? on 24th January 2024.

Today Ali would like us to write poems with a central, essential object – a thing, a talisman – around which all the action circles. He says he’s looking for the poetic equivalent of Rosebud in Citizen Kane, Hedda Gabler’s father’s pistols, McMurphy’s pack of erotic playing cards in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the briefcase in Pulp Fiction. He’s not looking for a poem about an object — no odes to telephones or hub caps – but a poem in which an object allows other things to happen, other stories to be told. It doesn’t have to appear all the time but it has to be important. 

54 thoughts on “Red Shoes”

  8. Beautiful red shoes, make you feel young and full of it, even though they do pinch a bit! When the day is grey and you really don’t want to go to work, put on those red shoes, they will make your day!

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  12. I remember the Red Shoes. I can’t remember how it ends. Egads, I would have to dance forever. Wow, I just wiki’ed the Hans Christian Anderson children’s story. That’s terrible. She had the executioner cut her feet off so she could stop. He (Anderson) wrote some scary children’s tales. Yours is way, way better.

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