An apple tree in the snow.
And an apple
that never fell, clinging
to a branch at the top.
For Basho it would be settled.
But I’m of a mind
to incite Aristotle’s tragic
plot structure—
I must purge pity.
Withered, frozen
inane and useless
with each puff of breath
while this tree, mistaken for biblical
with pitched fingers
dappled in warts and jewel
sways the loam of bark
into a sky where no thing asks
to be born
but is
(immeasurably small) in
luxury—

I think
all things look
average to one another
where there is
astonishment raving
not so much
as to tremble.
I think some mistakes
are made with no greater
purpose than this.

Published January 3rd, 2021

Bianca Stone is a poet and visual artist. Her books include Someone Else’s Wedding Vows (Tin House & Octopus Books 2014), The Mobius Strip Club of Grief (Tin House, 2018) and a collaboration with Anne Carson, Antigonick, an illuminated book of Carson’s translation of Antigone (New Directions, 2012). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine and The Baffler. Her newest collection is a children’s book of a Gertrude Stein poem, A Little Called Pauline, (Penny Candy Books, 2020). She lives in Vermont.

Tiffanie Delune is a French Belgo-Congolese artist based in London. Delune has exhibited all over the world, including 16/16 in Lagos, Nigeria, The Gramophone Works in London, England, and Cité de la Mode et du Design in Paris, France. Her work has been acquired by the Fondation Gandur Pour l’Art in Geneva and the New York-Presbyterian Alexandra Cohen Hospital For Women And Newborns in New York City. In 2020, Delune had exhibits at Ed Cross Fine Art in London, Art x Lagos and Seeds of Light, both of which can be viewed online.