Photo by Daniel Schechner
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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.
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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.
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Detail from the Devonshire Hunting Tapestries (medieval French; now hanging in the V&A, London)
These deer live in a cemetery in Chicago.
They seem to be doing well, thank God.
https://www.facebook.com/robertloerzel/videos/497987692499205
Posted by: mitch sisskind | February 05, 2023 at 10:43 AM
Love this poem Bianca.
Posted by: Matthew Rohrer | February 05, 2023 at 11:06 AM
How sweet compassion is in poetry-and elsewhere.
Posted by: Grace Cavalieri | February 05, 2023 at 11:19 AM
This is a good fucking poem!!!
Posted by: Jack Skelley | February 05, 2023 at 11:26 AM
A vivid visual, and a poem with an important instruction. So good.
Posted by: Beth Joselow | February 05, 2023 at 12:53 PM
what skelley said
Posted by: lally | February 05, 2023 at 01:21 PM
What lally said
Posted by: Jack Skelley | February 05, 2023 at 02:32 PM
This is a wonderful poem. I love it. Great artwork too.
Posted by: Eileen | February 05, 2023 at 02:50 PM
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.
Posted by: clarinda | February 05, 2023 at 03:25 PM
Compassionate and empathetic...those deer are haunting!! Terrific poem.
Posted by: Denise Duhamel | February 05, 2023 at 08:00 PM
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.
Posted by: David Lehman | February 06, 2023 at 10:03 AM
I'm hooked Bianca Stone!
Posted by: Maureen | February 07, 2023 at 11:50 AM
Moving. Terrific. Thanks
Posted by: Phyllis Rosenzweig | February 11, 2023 at 11:08 AM
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.
Posted by: Peter Kearney | February 12, 2023 at 08:34 PM