Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, RED SLIPPERS, by AMY LOWELL


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

RED SLIPPERS, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Red slippers in a shop-window; and outside in the street, flaws of gray, windy sleet!
Subject(s): Shoes; Shopping; Boots; Sneakers; Shoemakers


Red slippers in a shop-window; and outside in the street, flaws of gray, windy sleet!

Behind the polished glass the slippers hang in long threads of red, festooning from the ceiling
like stalactites of blood, flooding the eyes of passers-by with dripping color, jamming their
crimson reflections against the windows of cabs and tram-cars, screaming their claret and salmon
into the teeth of the sleet, plopping their little round maroon lights upon the tops of
umbrellas.

The row of white, sparkling shop-fronts is gashed and bleeding, it bleeds red slippers. They spout
under the electric light, fluid and fluctuating, a hot rain-and freeze again to red slippers,
myriadly multiplied in the mirror side of the window.

They balance upon arched insteps like springing bridges of crimson lacquer; they swing up over
curved heels like whirling tanagers sucked in a wind-pocket; they flatten out, heelless, like
July ponds, flared and burnished by red rockets.

Snap, snap, they are cracker sparks of scarlet in the white, monotonous block of shops.

They plunge the clangor of billions of vermilion trumpets into the crowd outside, and echo in
faint rose over the pavement.

People hurry by, for these are only shoes, and in a window farther down is a big lotus bud of
cardboard, whose petals open every few minutes and reveal a wax doll, with staring bead eyes
and flaxen hair, lolling awkwardly in its flower chair.

One has often seen shoes, but whoever saw a cardboard lotus bud before?

The flaws of gray, windy sleet beat on the shop-window where there are only red slippers.





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