If you live an urban area,
you've probably come across a pair of shoes
dangling from telephone wire at some point or another.
In fact, the act of “shoe tossing” –
in which shoes are tied together by their laces
and thrown across power lines –
is considered by some to be a folk art.
Everyone has seen it,
yet no one really knows what the shoes symbolize
or why shoe tossing happens in the first place.
I have always wanted to do it,
and so I loop together some Reeboks
and chuck them in the air, getting them stuck
on Java and Manhattan in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
I wonder how long they will last,
and if someone will see
their poetry.