It isn’t enough that we are butchers, taking apart
What struggled so hard to move in concerted grace
In search of seed or stalk, a neck like ours, canted
Towards the sun; the broth simmers on the stove,
The scent of it a cure if that’s all that’s at hand,
The water gold with fat rendered into lacunae,
A memory without need of words, the promontory
Of your uncus nestled behind your skull, puppeteer
Concealed by the velvet curtain. The hook curves
Around, brings you back to the time of illness, fevers
Starved, a relative wealth, stretched with water,
Whatever roots you have, onions, carrots dowsing earth,
As much salt as you taste when you swallow tears,
Knowing yourself a killer who would kill again.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 25, Issue 1.
Daisy Bassen is a poet and community child psychiatrist who graduated from Princeton University’s Creative Writing Program and completed her medical training at The University of Rochester and Brown. Her work has been published in Salamander, McSweeney’s, Smartish Pace, Crab Creek Review, New York Quarterly, Little Patuxent Review, and [PANK] among other journals. She was the winner of the So to Speak 2019 Poetry Contest, the 2019 ILDS White Mice Contest, the 2020 Beullah Rose Poetry Prize, and the 2022 Erskine J Poetry Prize. She was nominated multiple times for Best of the Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize. Born and raised in New York, she lives in Rhode Island with her family.
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