Pieter Boel’s Dead deer on a stone pedestal (c. 1650-1674)

WHAT I AM ASKING WITH MY EYES 

—after Wislawa Szymborska

I prefer feral, fevered black cats, 

              a shunt of ash on the

breast.

I prefer winged elms fluttering beside me on

both sides of the gravel path.

I prefer countries to let me in—

and back out. 

I prefer peacock blue. 

I prefer peacocks.

I prefer platform shoes in shades of blue. 

I prefer a joyous shot in the dark.

I prefer shots in the dark. 

      Perhaps, I prefer dark.

I prefer the names of my children 

               over other children’s names. 

I prefer clouds that pummel each other

above smokestacks,

  though I worry they may harm the

environment.

I prefer my life to be like an explosion. 

I prefer not being afraid of men,

not on the street, 

       not if I accidentally waltz

in on a wall of urinals in

the men’s bathroom,

       not even if I borrow the

men’s on purpose when

the gender-neutral line’s

       too long at the Blue

Plate.

I prefer not having a guy last night flash

phone porn in my face. 

I prefer to ask him:

       Are you a creep? 

Making him answer

yes or no.

I prefer not being afraid of men, so I don’t

and I won’t, but 

I was last summer.

When a guy held a gun to my hip, 

I preferred not hearing

what he told me to do, 

so I screamed and ran and fell in the

street, 

      and he was gone. 

I prefer people who want to hurt me to

answer the question

I am asking with my eyes—          

why.

Shelly Cato’s writing has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Iron Horse Literary Review (2024 NaPoMo Winner), Rattle, Poet Lore, Washington Square Review, and TriQuarterly Review. She lived in the Mississippi Delta for 25 years and now writes on Mulberry Fork in Walker County, Alabama. When she is on the river on her paddleboard, it is still on the river—sometimes—and she can see things she would never have seen before.