Of my unclear and unimaginable self
I want none of it. There is nothing
higher than I. Only monks at my feet kissing lice.
I have nothing to give but tears, of which one
is too much and a whole sea
not enough. Do not fathom me here.
Do not touch this. Having laid the cosmic egg
who will take my immortal life in their hands?
Of my thirst, endless floods. Relativism.
And anarchy is all I seem to incur.
It is said this planet came to be
when I was pulled apart.
When God Is Drunk During Creation It is Not A Good Look
You rise naked from all things chaos
to tear the sea from the sky
and rub your hands together:
mountains, rivers,
metal, the cays and craws
wandering for a name;
your sloppy hands forge
luxurious breasts and balls
tight in a Babylonian fervor
no memory whatsoever
of the invention
of the platypus, mammal
with duck bill and venom
purely to compete for a mate—
sadist even then, knowing
the structure of pleasure and panic.
In those moments you hardly knew
what to call yourself.
In those blackouts
joy sat upon your face
like a loose mask
and you feasted on the last
of the unicorns
and licked the wings off Man.
AGAIN Trying To Write A POEM ABOUT A B&W
Photograph Of A Wolf
Still, I stare at it. The bare trees fading into mist
where also
precise and stretched out paw prints
lead from the lower right of the frame
and disappear too.
In fact, whole photograph
is moving away from the photographer
who now is me
looking back through time
from my removed, moral stance.
It seems as if the wolf is stumbling; as if a leg
is missing. Everything is washed out. Frigid.
Fearful. Probably the wolf is long gone
and the snow evaporated, taken back.
At times poetry fills me with loathing
for what cannot be left alone.
Bianca Stone is a poet and visual artist. She is the author of Someone Else’s Wedding Vows (Tin House & Octopus Books, 2014), Poetry Comics From the Book of Hours, (Pleiades, 2016) and The Mobius Strip Club of Grief (Tin House, 2018). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, jubilat and Green Mountain Review. She is Director of Programs at the Ruth Stone Foundation.