Natalie Shapero Columbus, OH
Natalie Shapero’s poems have appeared in 32 poems, The Kenyon Review, Southwest Review and elsewhere. She lives in Columbus, OH.
Billy Collins’ comments:
“These poems are alive with wit and playfulness, and all are carefully controlled by the charming, self-deprecating voice of their speakers.”
They say it only takes 36 hours to brainwash a hostage
into siding with her captors. I believe I could be taken
in under 12 ( I have always been precocious).
By the time the sun burns red, they will send me for stove wood
and know I’ll come back, not with limbs secretly green
that shiver with the match’s scrape,
but with the driest sticks I can find. I will blow on them for hours.
And when, gutting fish for supper, I slip a paring knife
up my sleeve, it will not be to slit a throat. It will not be
to shred the bedsheets, tie them off, and pitch on
out the window. No, in the early morning when they’re asleep,
even the old drunk ex-comrade assigned to watch the door,
I will retrieve the knife from a hole in the mattress
and pull myself by my elbows to the room’s edge,
praying they won’t wake as I carve our names
into the doorframe in a heart. Outside, the horizon can’t blink
back the sun. The knife is getting dull, but still serves fine
for carving one more tally on my thigh