1.
If I get into bed
and don’t rotate my slippers,
the toes point at me
when I’m ready to rise.
My toes will face the room,
as they should, when I wake.
I know what adjustments
to make. Before I stand,
I reach in the dark,
turn those slippers full circle,
or almost.
2.
Woolen, and loafer style,
they’re so soft. Patterned
with diamonds of maroon,
green, orange and gray, they bring me the snug feeling
of dark taverns.
I’ll explain.
Just remember colored
shapes with outlines,
like windows of stained glass.
3.
I was an inspector once,
doing my job
on a misty autumn afternoon.
There were eight people in the bar—some men playing
darts—and Jerry Springer’s show on two TV’s.
A woman sat by herself, with a beer and a shot.
With a dreamy, leaf-spattered world outside,
with it being so late in the 20th century...with
bar lights so low, and quiet company around me,
I had no urge
to work fast or move on.
I wrote three simple orders:
Condensate pooling in bar coolers. Unclog drains and maintain.
Provide hand wash soap in the men’s room.
Replace missing tiles to restore men’s room floor to smooth and cleanable condition.
4.
On Springer, the final trio
of lovers-who-cheated
was brought center stage for the wrap-up.
The woman at the bar had murmured
through the whole show. Nodded
sometimes, or shook her head, but she
hadn’t come to judge.
On the screens, two men flanked the woman who’d done them both.
She wore stirrup pants and an untucked shirt
with triangular panels of bright colors.
When Jerry opened it up to the studio audience:
Ask them anything you want
a young white fellow in a V-neck sweater took the mic:
This question is for the lady who looks like a church window.
The woman by herself and I couldn’t help but look up then.
We felt it: he chose those words.
When you speak a sentence that dense—when you compose—
you know what you did.
We saw he was puffed up about it, but discreetly.
A patterned, untucked shirt like a church window. At the bar
the woman turned back to her drinks and said without malice:
That’s something big people like to wear.
5.
That was a long time ago.
In our sleeping house, near midnight, the dog Dre’s
whistling snore becomes a whine, then footsteps.
I have to surface to let him out.
I reach down
and find my soft slippers—that look like a church window—
and turn them full circle, or almost.
Sue Blaustein retired from the Milwaukee Health Department in 2016. She published her first book—In the Field, Autobiography of an Inspector—in 2018, and a chapbook The Beer Line in 2022. She blogs for Milwaukee’s Ex Fabula, and serves as a volunteer interviewer/writer for the Veteran’s Administration’s “My Life My Story” program. Find more information and publication credits at www.sueblaustein.com.