The Shop Across the Street
by Sandy McIntosh
First it was a shoe shop.
The shoemaker so poor,
he slept on the floor
and resoled customer’s shoes
with cardboard.
*
When it was a clothing store
the young owner
decorated her window
with grace and invention,
one spring hanging a sign
“Just Married!”
and posing manikins
as bride and groom
holding pictures
of her own wedding.
Another spring
her sign read:
“It’s a boy!” and she dressed
her manikins
in blue
surrounding them
with toys.
For Halloween,
she costumed the manikins
with sinister masks.
But in December,
when she dressed them
in Christmas finery,
she neglected to remove
the sinister masks—
which troubled us
as we ate our breakfast
and watched
from the café across the street.
Later, she hung a sign:
“Divorced. Closing Store.”
She’d stripped the window
and abandoned the manikins
to their nakedness.
Under the stark
neon streetlamp
they glared at us:
Arctic snow.
*
Now the shop
is run by a man
selling buttons.
He has swiveling reptilian eyes
and dresses formally,
a lengthy metal chain
from a window curtain
as a watch fob
on his polka-dotted vest.
—for Peter Blair
________________________
Sandy McIntosh’s collections of poetry include The After-Death
History of My Mother, Between Earth and Sky, Endless
Staircase, Earth Works, Which Way to the Egress?, and two
chapbooks: Obsessional and Monsters of the Antipodes. “The
Shop Across the Street” is part of a book titled Forty-Nine
Guaranteed Ways to Escape Death (forthcoming September
2007). McIntosh’s prose includes Firing Back with Jodie-Beth
Galos, From a Chinese Kitchen, and The Poets in the Poets-in-
the-Schools. His poetry and essays have been published in The
New York Times, Newsday, The Nation, the Wall Street
Journal, American Book Review, and elsewhere. Previously,
McIntosh was Managing Editor of Confrontation magazine
(published by Long Island University), and he is currently Managing
Editor of Marsh Hawk Press.
◄ Previous Page Apple Valley Review, Spring 2007 Next page ►
First it was a shoe shop.
The shoemaker so poor,
he slept on the floor
and resoled customer’s shoes
with cardboard.
*
When it was a clothing store
the young owner
decorated her window
with grace and invention,
one spring hanging a sign
“Just Married!”
and posing manikins
as bride and groom
holding pictures
of her own wedding.
Another spring
her sign read:
“It’s a boy!” and she dressed
her manikins
in blue
surrounding them
with toys.
For Halloween,
she costumed the manikins
with sinister masks.
But in December,
when she dressed them
in Christmas finery,
she neglected to remove
the sinister masks—
which troubled us
as we ate our breakfast
and watched
from the café across the street.
Later, she hung a sign:
“Divorced. Closing Store.”
She’d stripped the window
and abandoned the manikins
to their nakedness.
Under the stark
neon streetlamp
they glared at us:
Arctic snow.
*
Now the shop
is run by a man
selling buttons.
He has swiveling reptilian eyes
and dresses formally,
a lengthy metal chain
from a window curtain
as a watch fob
on his polka-dotted vest.
—for Peter Blair
________________________
Sandy McIntosh’s collections of poetry include The After-Death
History of My Mother, Between Earth and Sky, Endless
Staircase, Earth Works, Which Way to the Egress?, and two
chapbooks: Obsessional and Monsters of the Antipodes. “The
Shop Across the Street” is part of a book titled Forty-Nine
Guaranteed Ways to Escape Death (forthcoming September
2007). McIntosh’s prose includes Firing Back with Jodie-Beth
Galos, From a Chinese Kitchen, and The Poets in the Poets-in-
the-Schools. His poetry and essays have been published in The
New York Times, Newsday, The Nation, the Wall Street
Journal, American Book Review, and elsewhere. Previously,
McIntosh was Managing Editor of Confrontation magazine
(published by Long Island University), and he is currently Managing
Editor of Marsh Hawk Press.
◄ Previous Page Apple Valley Review, Spring 2007 Next page ►
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Apple Valley Review:
A Journal of Contemporary
Literature
ISSN 1931-3888
Volume 2, Number 1
(Spring 2007)
Copyright © 2007
by Leah Browning, Editor.
All future rights to material
published in the Apple
Valley Review are retained
by the individual authors
and artists.
www.applevalleyreview.com
A Journal of Contemporary
Literature
ISSN 1931-3888
Volume 2, Number 1
(Spring 2007)
Copyright © 2007
by Leah Browning, Editor.
All future rights to material
published in the Apple
Valley Review are retained
by the individual authors
and artists.
www.applevalleyreview.com
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