Was This the Face

Actual children, there are in this world, believing
a burnt plant can be brought back by spraying
under its leaves a green perfume. Machines
have learned to read the date off a dime from orbit.
Chimps recite IF THIS, THEN THAT. Weather
is thought to be the dead. Of the sun shower,
you grunted, THAT IS MY FATHER. When you die,
I’ll point to the toxins blocking the constellations,
say that’s you. You, who measure your lovers
in milliHelens, the unit of female beauty
required to launch only a single ship.
A quote from possibly Ghandi: THE WORLD IS SICK

UNTO DEATH OF BLOOD SPILLING, so why
must we insist on recalling our battles? Tell me. 
Tell me the joke involving the Jewish biddies
(THE FOOD IS LOUSY HERE, AND SUCH SMALL PORTIONS)
but make it instead about God. God is abusive
toward all His children, and also he hardly ever
comes around! IF THIS, THEN THAT. If no
news is good news, then, baby, there is no
                                                                     no news.

Heel

I failed to avoid the South.
Graceland, docksides, children gutting
fish with a knife,
the hint of another
shame-bathed night, your hard
hand on my mouth.

Think I won’t tell your wife
you dipped me in wordlessness, the yard
smarting with calla lilies?

Good luck shutting
me up, you sorry mother
of Achilles.  

Natalie Shapero is the author of No Object (Saturnalia, 2013), and her poetry has appeared in The Believer, The New Republic, Poetry, and elsewhere. She currently writes and teaches at Kenyon College, where she is a Kenyon Review Fellow.