Natalie Shapero

So I had two lists of names for a girl, so

what. The president’s allowed to

have two speeches, in case the hostage

comes home in a bag. The geese

in the metropark don’t want

for bread crumbs, despite the signs

proclaiming the land provides them all

they need. I was a hard child, by which

I mean I was callous from the start.

Even now, were I to find myself after

a grand disease or blast, among the pasty

scattering of survivors, there isn’t one

human tradition I would choose to carry

forward. Not marking feast days, not

assembling roadside shrines, not marrying

up, not researching the colloquialism

STATEN ISLAND DIVORCE, not

representing paste pearls as the real

things, not recounting how the advent

of photography altered painting,

soured us on the acrylic portrait, thrust us

toward the abstract, sent us seeking

to capture in oil that which film would

never be wasted on: umbrella stands,

unlovely grates, assorted drains, body casts.

I typically hate discussing the past

and treasure the option, rarer and rarer,

to turn from it, as when K’s twins

were born and one of them

nearly died — I don’t remember which,

that’s how much they got better.

So I had two lists of names for a girl, so

what. The president’s allowed to

have two speeches, in case the hostage

comes home in a bag. The geese

in the metropark don’t want

for bread crumbs, despite the signs

proclaiming the land provides them all

they need. I was a hard child, by which

I mean I was callous from the start.

Even now, were I to find myself after

a grand disease or blast, among the pasty

scattering of survivors, there isn’t one

human tradition I would choose to carry

forward. Not marking feast days, not

assembling roadside shrines, not marrying

up, not researching the colloquialism

STATEN ISLAND DIVORCE, not

representing paste pearls as the real

things, not recounting how the advent

of photography altered painting,

soured us on the acrylic portrait, thrust us

toward the abstract, sent us seeking

to capture in oil that which film would

never be wasted on: umbrella stands,

unlovely grates, assorted drains, body casts.

I typically hate discussing the past

and treasure the option, rarer and rarer,

to turn from it, as when K’s twins

were born and one of them

nearly died — I don’t remember which,

that’s how much they got better.

Of surgeons putting their knives to erroneous

body parts, stories abound. So can you really blame

my neighbor for how, heading into the operation,

he wrote across his good knee NOT THIS KNEE?

The death of me: I’m never half so bold. You will

feel, the doctor said, my hand and cold –

and I thought of the pub quiz question: which three

countries are entirely inside of other countries?

I bought the bound ONE THOUSAND NAMES

FOR BABY, made two lists: one if she’s born breathing,

one if not. The second list was longer. So much

that I might call her, if she were never to bear

the name, never turn to it, suffer shaming, mull its

range and implications, blame it, change it, move

away to San Marino, Vatican City, Lesotho.

What pride I feel in America stems from our anthem

being the toughest one to sing. The high segment

with the red burn of the rocket: only a few

can reach. Watching a stranger parallel park, I pray

she abrades her neighbor. Watching football, I need

to see a man die. I need to see the intractable passing

and violence. Of the cruelty ringing the Earth,

I am a portion. I never said he was a bad man, only

a larger portion. He wreaked harm on us for years

and then one day he began to die. I watched as science

shattered his body to wrest the disease out, stopping

just short of his failure. Failure, the word

he favored over death. Me, I favored nothing over

death. I held him like a brother. I knew him as an error

of God, dropped at the doorstep of our age, and what

could we do but save him? I began to suspect so many

of machinations. How my parents had summoned me

into this world, but then when I arrived,

they were not here. My whole being was a set-up.

They called me over to sit alone with the weather

and soot, unfettered. They said I had differences to be

resolved. After attempting the anthem, upwards of fifty

percent remark, I should have started lower or I should

have chosen something else instead. Uneasy lies the head.

The camera adds ten what, I can’t remember.

But the threat’s enough to make me stay

away. I don’t want any more of what I have.

I don’t want another spider plant. I don’t

want another lover. Especially I don’t want

another clock, except insofar as each of us

is a clock, all hammers and counting

down. And yes, I know by heart the list

of lifetimes. A worker bee will die before

a camel. A fox will die before a pilot whale.

A pocket watch will die before the clock inside

the crocodile—I think of this often, but never

tell my lover, as I do not tell him that,

upstairs, a moth is pinned by the window

sash. I make no plans to free it. Everyone says

the baby looks like me, but I can’t see it.