My twin is gone, and I'm useless now,
an unemployed porter in a world without suitcases.
Dead air thrusts a heavy ankle between my flaps;
my laces stir at the wind's cold feet.
Sweat of leather, scuff of life,
if only I could rise and carry myself
away from my shape!
One Shoe
One Shoe
By Sandra Gilbert
Prairie Schooner, Vol. 48, No. 2 (Summer 1974)
Biography
Sandra M. Gilbert has published eight collections of poetry–most recently Aftermath (2011)–and among prose books, Wrongful Death, Death's Door, Rereading Women, and, in 2014, The Culinary Imagination: From Myth to Modernity. In 2015 she coedited Eating Words: A Norton Anthology of Food Writing with Roger Porter. She is currently at work on "Saturn's Meal," a new collection of verse. With longtime collaborator Susan Gubar, she received the 2012 Award for Lifetime Achievement from the National Book Critics Circle.