Line

posted Dec 1, 2009

If you’d like to use me, use
a line. Your mother’s slumped against
the porch, the backyard cur unfenced
and viral. In the shoes
of countless cops, you’ve seen her face
moan up at you, slack-eyed. Disgrace

will do. Tell me how I refract
your ire like volcanic rock.
Say I’m a combination lock,
weighty and exact,
toughest to turn precisely where
it turns. You’re almost there.

Natalie Shapero's poetry has appeared in Blackbird, FIELD, Poetry, Smartish Pace, and elsewhere. She lives in Chicago.

We’ve published three more poems by Shapero: “Coconut,” “Our War,” and “Timber.”