Natalie Shapero

How Do You Like Me Now

Had been lukewarm on seeing the movie rehashing the shocks
of ten years ago—who wants to live that
twice?—but I ended up sitting there rapt.
It all felt new—I remembered nothing—that must’ve been the era
when I was too focused on harming myself to really take in
all the scandals. Trying to recall that time was like missing
a step on the staircase—my mind would just skip it
and offer instead some memory from way before—
a supermodel getting her legs
insured by Lloyd’s of London, or someone’s attempt at interjecting,
at all available intervals, the suggestion that God
is a woman. HE’S GOT THE WHOLE
WORLD IN HIS HANDS— or HER HANDS—
Ok, so God is a woman. I don’t give a shit. Or I guess
I do, insofar as I can’t not care about God’s insidious use
of Her womanness to obscure and soften
Her scorn for the factory villages, Her support for consolidation
of wealth, Her condoning of the breaking
of strikes and the sprawl of jails.
I mean, I know incredible women, but also I’ve seen women
wall off the greenway or order the city to drag
the sewers with magnets to recover their misplaced metals,
touching nothing until someone lesser has cleaned it.
I’ve seen women construct high homes,
insisting it’s all for the balcony view, but it’s really about the staff.
So that, when they fall, they’re finished. Out with the trash.

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Natalie Shapero is the author of the poetry collections Hard Child and No Object, and her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine and elsewhere. She teaches at Tufts University.