Bianca Stone: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Daniel Schechner

_______________________________________________________

Set Designer

 

Once, Mark Leidner talked me into doing set design,

unpaid, in the Poconos

where I would be forever traumatized

by the overpopulation of deer,

growths on their bodies and bald patches,

limping and scarred from being hit by cars,

and the one the crew called “jawbone”

that kept coming around

because its jawbone was hanging off, unusable, from its head

while the body wasted away

and I brought out mashed potatoes

that it lapped up with a long tongue.

 

We had to fire the creepy sound guy

who was clearly on drugs

and I found a big plastic gallon of Dewar’s                                    

in the Airbnb cupboard

and a guitar

and got drunk alone on the deck of the cabin

amazed no one would join me.

I woke in the middle of the night

for my usual routine of self-hatred

until I realized how excruciating it all was

and instead wrote down on the set schedule

“remember how good it feels to be good to yourself”

carrying it around with me ever since.

Hoping I will.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Bianca Stone is the author of the poetry collections Someone Else's Wedding Vows (Tin House Book / Octopus Books, 2014), The Möbius Strip Club of Grief (Tin House, 2018), What is Otherwise Infinite (Tin House, 2022). Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The Nation. She hosts Ode & Psyche Podcast, and lives in Vermont.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

                                    Detail from the Devonshire Hunting Tapestries (medieval French; now hanging in the V&A, London)

 

Comments

[mitch sisskind]

These deer live in a cemetery in Chicago.
They seem to be doing well, thank God.

https://www.facebook.com/robertloerzel/videos/497987692499205

[Matthew Rohrer]

Love this poem Bianca.

[Grace Cavalieri]

How sweet compassion is in poetry-and elsewhere.

[Jack Skelley]

This is a good fucking poem!!!

[Beth Joselow]

A vivid visual, and a poem with an important instruction. So good.

[lally]

what skelley said

[Jack Skelley]

What lally said

[Eileen]

This is a wonderful poem. I love it. Great artwork too.

[clarinda]

I loved this poem from the title on. And yeah, I can easily see how those nightmarish damaged deer would be traumatic and also teach that being good to somebody, some sentient being, even--even!--oneself is a good thing.

[Denise Duhamel]

Compassionate and empathetic...those deer are haunting!! Terrific poem.

[David Lehman]

Kudos, Bianca. I wonder how many readers have felt this way "I woke in the middle of the night / for my usual routine of self-hatred." You have captured sopmething intensely sad and real.

[Maureen]

I'm hooked Bianca Stone!

[Phyllis Rosenzweig]

Moving. Terrific. Thanks

[Peter Kearney]

In this powerful poem, both jarring and captivating, one might expect that the beautiful Pocono Mountains would be the ideal place to inspire a set design for some future drama; however, that scenery brought only trauma. The mere deck of a cabin proved more effective, where our poet so enjoyed herself as to be amazed that no one cared to join her. The cabin deck provided what the mountains did not: a set design of powerful words rather than evocative scenery, words with the potential to transform her life forever.