I prefer pickles to naked cucumbers.
I prefer cats to kittens and kittens to children.
I prefer to sit nearest the door, though not for the reasons you might suspect.
I prefer the color fuchsia to the number seven.
I prefer solstices because they anticipate equinoxes.
I prefer to treat the pesky symptoms versus the subtler causes.
Candor is preferable unless it risks hurting anyone’s feelings.
I prefer to let my hair get a little dirty, to smell all the better once I wash it.
I prefer the savor of snark wrapped in an earnest pillow of dumpling dough.
I prefer not to distinguish between luxury and necessity.
Je préfère blâmer la victime, car la victime, c’est moi.
I prefer the certainty of uncertainty to the uncertainty of certainty.
I prefer my men as I prefer my cocktails: free, yet craftily curated.
I prefer love at first sight and other self-fulfilling prophecies—
the one-night stand that lasts fifty years.
I prefer not to write list poems or love poems, but that would mean no poems whatsoever.
~
Julie Benesh is author of the poetry collection Initial Conditions and the chapbook About Time. She has been published in Tin House, Another Chicago Magazine, Florida Review, and other places, and received an Illinois Arts Council Grant. She holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College and a PhD in human and organizational systems.