The Shop Across the Street by SANDY McINTOSH

First it was a shoe shop.

      The shoemaker so poor,

He slept on the floor

      and resoled customer’s shoes

with cardboard.

*

When it was a clothing store

     The young owner

decorated her window

     with grace and invention,

one spring hanging a sign

     “Just Married!”

and posing manikins

       as bride and groom

holding pictures

       of her own wedding.

Another spring

       her sign read:

“It’s a boy!”and she dressed

       Her manikins

in blue

      surrounding them

with toys.

     For Halloween,

She costumed the manikins

     with sinister masks.

But in December,

     when she dressed them

in Christmas finery,

     she neglected to remove

the sinister masks—

      which troubled us

as we ate our breakfast

      and watched

from the café′across the street.

      Later, she hung a sign:

“Divorced. Closing Store .”

      She’d stripped the window

and abandoned the manikins

      to their nakedness.

Under the stark

      neon streetlamp

they glared at us:

      Arctic snow.

*

Now the shop

      Is run by a man

selling buttons.

      He has swiveling reptilian eyes

And dresses formally,

      a lengthy metal chain

from a window curtain

      as a watch fob

on his polka-dotted vest.

              ---for Peter Blair
                                                                                                          from FORTY-NINE GURANTEED WAYS to ESCAPE DEATH

Copyright ⓒ2007 by Sandy McIntosh
Venetia's Coffee Shop, Lower Clapton, E5 / Ewan-M

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