Cover

Title Page

Popular Longing

NATALIE SHAPERO

COPPER CANYON

PRESS

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This e-book edition was created through a special grant provided by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.

Dedication

for Meg Shevenock

POPULAR
LONGING

Man at His Bath

Man at His Bath

Six years ago, the big museum sold eight famous paintings

to purchase, for unspecified millions,

Gustave Caillebotte’s MAN AT HIS BATH.

Now it’s hip to have a print of it,

and whenever I see one hung for decoration,

I’m almost certain that this is what Caillebotte

had in mind when he broke out the oils

in 1884: some twenty-first-century bitch in Boston

catching a glimpse of a framed reproduction,

recollecting a study about how washing oneself may induce

a sense of culpability. What I remember

is he insisted I clean before leaving. That, and he was

trying to be dreamlike. He took my jaw in his hand

and said IN THE NEXT LIFE, WE’LL REALLY BE TOGETHER,

and the clamp in his voice made me almost

certain he knew something I did not. Now I eat right,

train hard, get my shots. This life—I’m angling

to remain in this life as long as I can, being almost

certain, as I am, what’s after—

I do not like money, neither for itself
nor for what it can buy, as I want
nothing we know about.

René Magritte

My Hair Is My Thing

My Hair Is My Thing

The symphony’s out of funding again, and no

wonder: all those violins, the twisted strands

and sponges—who could not think

of torture? Last week I read a novel about a man

so awful that when he died I wept

because it was fiction. I wanted it to be real

so I could watch him really die.

I wanted you to die also, and to be feted

with a lengthy, organza-filled funeral,

so that I could make a big show