ISSUE TWENTY FOUR: Systemly Real | next poem →

All my shoes are dancing shoes, all my shadows lead home

Karen Neuberg

Elongated as if being pulled, my shadow
merges into the shadow
of the tree leaning in the direction of my destination
as sun behind keeps lowering
until our single shadow is swallowed
into dark’s glow. And then my swift
red shoes, my red dancing shoes,
dance across the distance to my home,
its door ajar, supper on the table, and there,
waiting, the one who always smiles on my return.

Karen Neuberg is a Brooklyn-based poet. Her latest book is Pursuit, (Kelsay Press, 2019) She is also the author of three chapbooks including the elephants are asking (Glass Lyre, 2017), She is associate editor of the online poetry journal, First Literary Review-East. Her poems and collages can be found in 805, New Verse News, and Verse Daily, among others.

ISSUE TWENTY FOUR: Systemly Real | next poem →











ISSUE TWENTY FOUR: Systemly Real


Karen Neuberg
   Advice
   All my shoes are dancing shoes,
      all my shadows lead home

Nicholas Alti
   dance dance dance ghoul sing ghoul be
   I, EXACTLY LIKE RAINWATER,
      SLIP TOWARD WORMS UNNOTICED

Chris Sumberg
   DOG PRAYER!! DOG PRAYER!! DOG PRAYER!!
      DOG PRAYER!! DOG PRAYER!! DOG PRAYER!!

Colleen Anderson
   Schrodinger's Box