“All poets are liars,” my play begins.
Plato was probably right. With this enfeebled mind
my only recourse is poetry.
Behind my head, heads begin to nod.
They doze in the surgical amphitheater behind my eyes.
I do not know what I hold more clearly in my mind:
the pain of what I had
or the pleasure in what I don’t.
In the afterlyric of childhood
you can barely stand to look back
without laughing
at how calmly desire and memory
see fit to destroy everything.
And thank God!
Let me be run through
with the wooden javelin of truth.
Let them remove my breastplate and grille
and wipe the mud from my brow.
Let them place a rose in my hand
and mutter that old prayer
and wave two fingers over me.
Let my only work be this,
to stare back
into the blue iris of the sky.
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Excerpted from The Near and Distant World Bianca Stone. Copyright © 2026 Bianca Stone. Published with permission from Tin House, an imprint of Zando, LLC.
