Quick Thinking
by Natalie Shapero
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 for the Omni Parker House, formerly the Parker House
hotel 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. I love how Mark Rothko’s brothers
truncated ROTHKOWITZ to ROTH, while he went weirder.
I love how No. 1 (Royal Red and Blue) exceeded by forty million dollars
its pre-sale estimate of thirty-five. I love knowing
that suicide is less like a choice and more
like being sucked out of the open door of an airplane. Is it selfish
to be sucked out of the open door of an airplane? Is it weak
to dignify the world, a world no longer mine? Its markets
and its solvents and its tyrants always talking
about how they’re redoing their windows, how they’re shifting
to extruded aluminum with the rot-resistant
cladding? I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW MORE
ABOUT THAT, I purred. Love was of course the wrong word.
This poem, which is from my forthcoming book STAY DEAD, is sort of a sequel to another, earlier poem in that same collection, as well as to writing I've done elsewhere, regarding questions of the conceptualization and narration of violence and recovery. I'm interested in the (shifting?) usage of the term "survivor," which seems to be generally defined as someone who continues on, especially after [insert non-exhaustive list of struggles]. After which experiences, specifically, can or should a still-living person be called a "survivor"? Are we using "survivor" to talk about literal biological life, or is it more of a figurative term that refers to generalized resilience and persistence? Can/should the "survivor" designation be determined by cultural consensus? By self-identification? By something else? Will a day ever come when my attempts to research these questions are not gummed up by a zillion search results about the 46-season reality show Survivor? Stay tuned...
Natalie Shapero is the author, most recently, of the poetry collection Popular Longing; her next book is forthcoming from Copper Canyon in 2025. She lives in Los Angeles.