The Red Shoes

“The Red Shoes” is a contemporary poem of 48 lines. The poem does not have a consistent meter, or specified beat, and does not employ rhyme at the end of the lines or internally. It is divided into 24 couplets and is driven by its narrative, or story. There is a clear cast of characters and a beginning where the speaker’s life in a Puerto Rican section of New York City in the 1970s or 1980s is established, a middle in which acquaintances die and a partner succumbs to violence because of addiction, and an end in which the speaker is separated from the partner and visits the “Calvary /Cemetery in Queens” (Lines 35-36). The poem surrounds the narrative with a lyrical frame that discusses the discovery of the “red slippers under the floorboards” (Line 1), and literary and movie versions of the fairytale The Red Shoes. Throughout, repeated images and references are strategically placed to create connections between seemingly disparate descriptions of the neighborhood and people and events in the speaker’s life.