
I require.
I require my son’s
life, no, a dozen
of them so eleven
can be smashed
in the carton
and still I will
have him. My son.
And butter. I require
butter. I will make
a sweet cake with dark
flour. I require the hard
soap smell of his cheek
as I require salt
for soup. Let me order
ten thousand of him,
then, if you kill
him again and again
my shelves will still
be filled with his future.
As for the others,
I will cut sweet butter
into their dark hours.
Laura Budofsky Wisniewski is the author of Sanctuary, Vermont (Orison Books, 2022) which won the 2020 Orison Poetry Prize, the 2022 NEPC Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize and the Foreword INDIES Bronze Award. She is author of the chapbook, How to Prepare Bear (Redbird Chapbooks). She was winner of Ruminate Magazine’s 2020 Janet B. Mccabe Poetry Prize, the 2019 Poetry International Prize, and the 2014 Passager Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in Poetry International, Narrative Magazine, The Missouri Review, On the Seawall, Image, and other journals.
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