 Shavasana 1 and II, by Wangechi Mutu (Kenya) 2019. Photo by Rob Corder via Flickr. CC BY-NC 2.0 Red Shoes Retrospective How wicked was that witch? She of the verdigris skin, carmine nails, ruby pumps. The one crushed under the weight of narrative symbolism. What if Dorothy, instead of Glinda fastening them to her feet, had taken the red shoes for herself? What would that say about her? Click-click-click. How spoiled was another fairy-tale girl? Karen begged for scarlet leather slippers. Got them. Couldn’t bear their restless fascination. Pleaded to have her feet chopped off, footwear and all. Those bloody stumps danced themselves into the forest. Follow those shoes. Into Walmart. Where you can buy t-shirts reading, Your body, my choice. Click-click-click. How possessed was the ballerina, Victoria? This iteration always on her toes. Her secret a mangled spirit seeping through crimson pointes steadfastly dancing her to death. Click-click-click. Vanity, though. The illusion, of control. Go ahead. Give those pretty shoes a twirl. Tappity-tap, stilettos on stone; clonkity-clonk, heels on yellow brick; swish-chasse, ballet slippers on wood. The slow sinking of princess heels into soil. A corpse posed. Click. Click. Click. Camille LeFevre Camille LeFevre crafts poetry and creative nonfiction, and teaches writing workshops on art and place, from her home on the unceded lands of the Hisatsinom, Yavapai, and Apache in Northern Arizona. Her essay, “Body Topography,” published in The Dodge, was selected for the 2026 Best of the Net Anthology. Her first poetry collection, Sandstone and Kin, will be published in Fall 2026. Her work also appears in Poets for Science, wildscape.literary, Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, Metphrastics, Fugue, Unleash Literary, Electric Lit, Brevity Blog, and other publications. She’s thrilled to have her work, once again, in The Ekphrastic Review.
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The Ekphrastic Review
COOKIES/PRIVACY
June 2026
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