Elizabeth Steinglass

Shoes of the Dead

empty shoes
flat and gray
amassed in monstrous piles
like schools of dead fish
dumped out of nets
missing the life
that gave them meaning
bring me your stories
the one we know
and can’t understand
and the ones we don’t know
and would understand
teach me to count six million
teach me to count one

 

Elizabeth Steinglass lives in Washington DC with her husband, two of her three children (the third has left the nest) and her cat Scout. She is the author of the children's book Soccerverse (Wordsong, 2019), and her work has appeared in the anthologies Imperfect, Dear Tomato, and The Poetry Friday Anthology for Celebrations.