The Wounded Breakfast in  General   

A huge shoe mounts up from the horizon,
squealing and grinding forward on small wheels,
even as a man sitting to breakfast on his veranda
is suddenly engulfed in a great shadow, almost
the size of the night . . .
He looks up and sees a huge shoe
ponderously mounting out of the earth.
Up in the unlaced ankle-part an old woman
stands at a helm behind the great tongue curled
forward; the thick laces dragging like ships' rope
on the ground as the huge thing squeals and
grinds forward; children everywhere, they look
from the shoelace holes, they crowd about the
old woman, even as she pilots this huge shoe
over the earth . . .

Soon the huge shoe is descending the
opposite horizon, a monstrous snail squealing
and grinding into the earth . . .

The man turns to his breakfast again, but sees
it's been wounded, the yolk of one of his eggs is
bleeding . . .

By Russell Edson

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Other poems by Russell Edson:

• A Historical Breakfast
• A Journey Through The Moonlight
• A Performance At Hog Theater
• Accidents
• Angels
• Antimatter
• Ape
• Ape And Coffee
• Conjugal
• Counting Sheep
• Elephant Dormitory
• Erasing Amyloo
• Grass
• Hands
• Mr. Brain
• On The Eating Of Mice
• One Lonely Afternoon
• Paying The Captain
• Sleep
• Soup Song
• The Alfresco Moment
• The Autopsy
• The Breast
• The Bridge
• The Changeling
• The Closet
• The Death Of A Fly
• The Fall
• The Family Monkey
• The Father Of Toads
• The Fight
• The Floor
• The Gentlemen In The Meadow
• The Having To Love Something Else
• The Lighted Window
• The Man Rock
• The Marionettes Of Distant Masters
• The Melting
• The Ox
• The Pattern
• The Philosophers
• The Pilot
• The Position
• The Reason Why The Closet-Man Is Never Sad
• The Road
• The Sad Message
• The Theory
• The Toy-Maker
• The Tree
• The Wounded Breakfast
• Vomit
• You