The Red Shoes

“Naked April” by Sheila Black (2015)

Like “The Red Shoes,” this poem employs couplets, discusses a break-up, and refers to other literary sources, this time from Greek mythology. Here, the speaker remembers another person whom they spent time with and is no longer with them because of their “hard sad mind” (Line 25). In this poem, too, death serves as a wake-up call: “I was thinking what it would be after I died” (Line 27) and “what is it [. . .] to sing as we did” (Lines 31-32). Memory is essential in this poem as well. The poem, however, is written from the first-person perspective.

“What You Mourn” by Sheila Black (2004)

This poem first appeared in Dancing with Cecil: Poems of Disability. Black has said this was the first poem where she actively wrote about her disability with authenticity. While this poem is confessional and reflects the poet’s own experience, it notes how she moved from feeling like “the exile I believed / I was, imprisoned in a foreign body” (Lines 11-12) to loving her body and its difference “as you love your own country, the familiar lay of the land, the unkempt trees” (Lines 27-28).