Pink Heels Redux (With Cats)

by Suzanne Lummis

              Created for and performed by Donna Sternberg Dancers

 Or call them pumps, as in—

pump yourself up by your shoes and
tie your own laces, Poor Cat. Try

to fit in. Six and a half—Tsk!—more
like six, too little, too narrow, a day

late and a buck short. Dance me
to the end of love said Leonard

Cohen Kat to Cat Cinderella. But hers fit.
Fit that in your pipe and smoke said

Somebody to Somebody Else. Pink.
Pink and sleek, sleek like a,

like a…  Fill in the blank. The tall
and slender, young and lovely shoes

that won’t go walking…  Get fit said Jane
Cat Ballou, back then, in the 80s, when

she made fitness cool. But these don’t.
Fit. Me. Sorry this poem’s so trite—

tight and unfitting. It’s not about Loss
not about Solace, not about nothing—

well, yes, about Nothing. Gotta make
somethin’ from nothin’. It’s a cool hand,  

nothin’, said Cool Hand Cat. Blown Money
blow smoke. Dice, roll me a chance. Lemons

can turn lemonade pink. Imagine. Think.
Mood Indigo Pink: an alley, a winding,

sliding, unhungry cat—not hungry ’cause
it knows where to look, how to see

through the dark, fill in the blank.

Cat on a Fence. Fitting or not, shoeless
or shoed, rose or rosé, barefoot

if that’s how it goes. To the end
of love and then back, then out

the back door—it’s dark. Sweet!
La nuit, night, noir, the backside

of pink. See, Chat Noir, it all—
the shoe, the smoke, sense

and nonsense, pink, even French—
                 fits
         in the dance.

— from Juniper Volume 1, Issue 3