two poems by bianca stone

Excerpts from The Monsieur Fragments



I found a white hair on your head
now I can feel the rain coming
I feel it in my left knee
behind the charcoal briquettes, monsieur
the ageless current of a storm
beginning
we are not alive in the imaginary
structures of living
no longer one-man missioning
around the cerulean earth
in a dark pod you imagine yourself
dressed entirely in tinfoil
the apartment shudders down romantically
cats know how to handle heat
which sends us into a small
panic and the hours mean hardly
anything when our love is stored
in a cool dry place

--

I have turned again 

to the dung beetle

mooring across the field 

turned again to the great Russian novel

at dawn I was convinced 

I had given up a promising life as a tap dancer 

we do not hold each other 

and think of the assassin constructing 

in the human ego

we listen briefly to the man shouting 

on the street outside the window

and think we are safe

Bianca Stone is the author of several chapbooks, including I Want To Open The Mouth God Gave You Beautiful Mutant (Factory Hollow Press); and illustrator of Antigonick, a collaboration with Anne Carson (New Directions).  Her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry 2011, Conduit, and Tin House. She lives in Brooklyn.