American Life in Poetry

This may be the only poem ever written in which a person claps the mud from a pair of shoes. Michael McFee’s poetry is just that original, in all of his books. His most recent is That Was Oasis (Carnegie Mellon Univ. Press, 2012), and he lives in North Carolina.   

Ovation

He stood on his stoop

and clapped her sneakers together

hard, a sharp report,

smacking right sole against left,

trying to shock the mud

from each complicated tread,

spanking those expensive footprints

until clay flakes and plugs

ticked onto the boxwood’s leaves

like a light filthy sleet

from the rubber craters and crannies

where they stuck weeks ago,

until her shoes were banged clean

though that didn’t stop

his stiff-armed slow-motion applause

with her feet’s emptied gloves,

slapping mate against mate

without missing a beat,

half-wishing that hollow sound

echoing off their neighbors’ houses

could call her back.