Stay Dead by Natalie Shapero

The poems in Stay Dead by Natalie Shapero are funny in the smartest way. They are intelligent and fast paced, incorporating darkness, puns, stupid kid jokes, absurd situations. They are poems about acting, art, dying, and especially and oddly, post-dying. Shapero has perfected comic timing and delivery in line breaks and pacing. The poems could pass as stand-up comedy in many instances, but also political and societal commentary. Just read them. Buy here.

From “Quick Thinking”

I mean it. I don’t want to be called a SURVIVOR.

I don’t want to be called a SURVIVOR so much that I just went ahead

and died: problem solved. That’s called

QUICK THINKING. That’s called WOMEN’S INGENUITY.

Everyone wants to know if I now miss the world

or at least its insensate components, such as the pulling apart

of Parker House Rolls or the clarity that comes

with knowing that pull-apart Parker House Rolls

are named of the Omni Parker House, formerly the Parker House

located on School Street in Boston and notable for briefly

employing in the kitchen both Ho Chi Minh

and Malcolm X, who share—and now we’re getting to the part

of the world that I do miss—a May 19 birthday. I love

a good fact . . .

From “Big Basin”

Five hours and forty-three minutes to ge two the redwood,

at which point a voice announced from the sky

ONE OF YOU DOWN THERE IS NINE HUNDRED YEARS OLD—

it didn’t specify which of us, but I’m pretty sure

it meant me—

I’m just so degraded. I couldn’t have gotten this degraded

in a few decades’ time . . .

From “Sorry to Eat”

and run, but I’m just in this enormous

rush to die so I can haunt you. I Really have to get moving. I’m actually

quite behind. . .