A History of High Heels - Tony Hoagland

[Larry Robinson]

A History of High Heels 



It’s like God leaned down long ago and said,
to a woman who was just standing around, 
“How would you like a pair of shoes
that shoves the backs of your feet up about four inches
so you balance always on your tiptoes

and your spine roller-coasters forward, then back,
so that even when you are spin-doctoring a corporate merger
or returning from your father’s funeral in Florida,
your rump sticks out in a fertility announcement

and your chest is pushed out a little bit in front of you,
the way that majorettes precede a marching band?”

No, I shouldn’t have said that — I’m sorry.
It’s just my curdled bitterness talking;
it’s just my disappointment flaring up 
                                           in a little brush fire of misogyny,
in a toxic chemical blaze of misdirected scorn —

because today is one of those days when I am starting to suspect
that sex was just a wild-goose chase
in which I honk-honk-honked away
                  three-quarters of my sweet, unconscious life.

Now my hair is gray, and I’m in the Philadelphia airport, 
where women are still walking past me endlessly
with that clickety-clack, clickety-clack,
flipping their hair and licking their teeth,

while underneath my own shoes 
I suddenly can feel the emptiness of space;
and over my head, light falling from the sky 
that all these years 
I might have been leaning back 

to gaze at and long for and praise.

	- Tony Hoagland
 
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