The Wounded Breakfast

The Wounded Breakfast
By Russell Edson

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 . . .