Max Jacob's Shoes

So for one of my many internships I co-curated the literature read at Intersection's Independent Press Spotlight Series. I got to read a lot of amazing writing and here is one of the pieces that I absolutely fell in love with (although it was not ultimately chosen to be read). It is written by Ray Gonzales and appears in Issue 20 of New American Writing.

Max Jacob's Shoes

They were found after his death by someone who needed shoes. When this man plucked them out of a mountain of trash, Max Jacob's shes came alive. They fit this person as if truth had never left and he slowly walked away from the filth. It took him a few days to realize he wore the shoes of a poet. The black shoelaces started talking to him in his sleep, the poems drifting out at night, floating beyond the man's bed to recite themselves to life. Max Jacob's black shoes glistened as if they had been shined yesterday, the sleepy man looking over the edge of his bed as the talking shoes tapped a clicking message that said a man who wears someone else's shoes is a man who knows how to get along in life. When he put them o n in the early light of dawn, the shoes quit reciting poetry and led the man to a quiet church Jacob would have never entered. The new owner of the shoes went into a church for the first time in over thirty years, the shoes echoing across the silent sanctuary where a surprised priest waited, sensing the approach of Jewish shoes. After the stranger revealed his sins to the priest, he emerged from the dark confessional and looked down at this bare feet. He went back into the tiny chamber, but Max Jacob's shoes were gone, their hushed disappearance casting a steady light of awareness on the barefoot man, the helpless priest, even the two mice in the sanctuary who revealed themselves to no one that night as they busily gnawed on a pair of twisted shoelaces.

My friend Wendy is an amazing illustrator. She likes to sketch people while she is riding on the Bart (the Bay Area's equivalent of the Metro). A week after I first saw her drawings, I went to a zine festival. And then I came up with the idea of riding Bart with Wendy, writing the stories of the people we saw while she sketched them, and turning our work into a zine. This Monday we did just that. I am excited and extremely nervous at the thought of people (other than the 10 people who read this blog) reading my writing. But it is good to feel excited and nervous.

So this is the beginning of my first Bart story:

I sit down next to a man so small, so dainty, so calm and contained that at first I think he's a woman. He is old despite the fact that his face is void of wrinkles except at his chin and at the corners of his eyes. He has good skin—it is slightly yellow and as I look at it longer, I begin to think there might be a faint tint of green to it. You can tell by his rounded shoulders, the single whisker growing long from under his lower lip, and the way he takes up almost no space on the bench-seat that he is old.

A Veritable Army of Mayhem

Two days ago I acted as shepherdess to 44 small girls between the ages of 5 and 8. I led them through art activities and lunch, onto the public bus system, to Presidio Bowl, and back to their school. At one point, we almost missed the bus. We could see it approaching from a distance, and we all took off running as fast as we could after it. I can only imagine the sense of hilarity and dread that must have quickly consumed the bus driver as he watched 44 small, brightly colored bundles shrieking and swarming towards his bus. It was like a scene in a war movie:
The battle-worn captain of the bus sets his jaw and watches as a veritable army of mayhem storms toward him with (almost) a hundred tiny feet. He imagines taking a long drag from a cigarette, exhales, and they are upon him.
But the best moment of the day was once we were actually on the bus, riding back to school. Pointing to the shells of sunflower seeds a previous passenger had left behind on the windowsill, one of the girls whispered to her friends, "Look! Baby clam shells!"