Bianca Stone

 
 

Recreation




I was saved by my own curiosity at the shattered states of Man.
It takes a long time. The body adjusts. I blame no one. 
I figure this is the way one grows up, finally, by
going to see what everyone is doing downstairs.
The sounds of people living coaxes me 
out of storage. No one is coming back 
 
in that same way they came in the first place, 
to tell you  
their desire is your desire. To tell you 
you’re not really here. 
 
But I am here. I look out at the green 
of my yard and the slightly darker green 
dimensions of forest, layers of greens, and black, 
and inside the ceaseless subject of birds continues,
questioning one another in music and some seeds 
blowing around in the air, indistinguishable from insects,
inspired only by wind, sunlight and water, 
and subject to nothing else.
 
Angels, it’s said, are oddly ignorant and lack senses, 
memory and genitals. Yet, they make a song so long and eternal 
no other creature could ever hope to sing it. Knowing 
and not knowing, and what it does: silence. Words. Another life. 

 
 
 

Mother’s Day


There’s no succor here—plus, we have, unfortunately, denied your application, though there were many strong moments (we’ll paste some examples of what was working well), this line was quite wry and vulnerable, and in general we liked the nature imagery—we wish we could give you money so you might find a quiet gazebo to write more of the same ambiguous and tormented poetry about the same vague abuses no one will give you a medal for since eventually you liked it, to be locked in a microwave the size of a planet, a billion children vying for a cold, leftover breast turning on a clear axis—it’s hard to console you when you are like this! Out there in wherever you are, drinking from a jar and eating your nightmarish chocolate flower—when you reapply (which I know you will, sung backwards into a Jocasta lullaby) tell them I sent you; that I agreed with you on that one line that said God is the gentle transference of madness. And no one asks to be born.
 
 
 

What About Being A Totally Lovely Person?



 
It occurs to me, like a walk. But am I to be cruel? It keeps snowing. Snow makes clean the yard. I want to be a lovely person I think. Let go by the previous wave. But part of me cannot. I sit poised with an antique gun and greasy rod. Don’t want to get into it. Yet it gets in. One might live in loveliness, occasional grace. But me?—Something feels less real. I listen to music. (And whom is asking?) The snow reflects into a false infinity, endless nevertheless. Barely decipherable desire. I serve a sentence for being mortal. A punishment for being born. For no thing is born for pleasure alone. But it occurs to me—and this is also true.
 
 
 

Wittgenstein & Imagination




Stuck here, on this earth with an anxious heartbeat like 
a mauled bird trying to get off the ground, already dead, but still 
under the influence of instinct until the final, final moment—
 
Wittgenstein was a man under constant intellectual pressure 
from himself. Whose high-strung, piano virtuoso brothers 
all committed suicide, respectively—
 
now, be so kind as to stand very still in the corner of the kitchen 
imagining actually being happy. I mean 
not in theory (you’re so good at that) but really imagine it, so that we 
might grieve what is inadequate in language together—
 
No one loves me is not a statement anyone will love, though 
I am holding it right now for you, like someone in an airport. 
Standing in front of a spear moving towards your head,
 
I wish to take it on, a
spiritual casting; I wish to give you things, gifts, not 
preparing to take something back from you, later, but
 
an offering—
 
I felt sort of horrified 
by Wittgenstein’s unwavering pathological insistence 
on moral code—disappearing into a remote island
to spend day and night thinking;
 
how he tortured himself into beautiful abstract thoughts
about the letter “A” only a few people in existence could ever parse out— 
 
and to whom does it matter now—
 
I am asking you 
 
to feel happy. I am on my knees begging you 
to consider it 
in your last but long flightless 
moments on this darkening earth. 

 

 

Bianca Stone is a poet and artist. Her books include The Mobius Strip
Club of Grief (Tin House, 2018), Someone Else's Wedding Vows (Octopus
Books and Tin House, 2014) and most recently What is Otherwise Infinite
(Tin House, 2022). Her poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The
Atlantic and The Nation. She teaches classes on poetry and consciousness
in Vermont, where she is Creative Director at the Ruth Stone House.