Stacy Szymaszek will be reading at the upcoming Poems about Nothing event at the Rubin Museum on January 26th. For more information about the reading, please click on our Upcoming Events tab. This is an excerpt from “Shift at Oars” which can be found in her book Emptied of All Ships (Litmus Press, New York, NY, 2005).
From “Shift at Oars”
water
relives
reservoir
boat
bottom
draft
displaced
º
lineal
thought
backward
body
no one
knows
the brains
I am now
_____
tree
an oar
origin
joints ruptured
soak in
deep ink
º
wallpaper
remnant
flower
float
chandelier
brief case
hundred words
logged
erode
my
Arabic
_____
congestion
of resin
person
forecasts
final position
restless sleep
º
width of
back
belted
sodium
poultice
exhausts
courtship
_____
agora
drain
a home
of you
wind
lashes
fronds
cellophane
º
where a
mammal
bled
activity
not yet
diffused
blackened
patch
of water
_____
weight
of oyster
in gloved
hand he
shucks
dented
pewter
º
assonance
her aspect
relocated
wind
shatters
plexi
phenomena
forgone
for me
shift
at oars
new
muscle
grown
bone
never
held
you
º
case
of dried
apricot
gorge
I am
summoned
capable
a day
outlast
forecast
coral reef
feeler
º
paper
cover
mallet
awl
downfall
fire-
box
androgyne
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Stacy Szymaszek was born in Milwaukee, WI. She is the author of the books Emptied of All Ships (Litmus Press, 2005) and Hyperglossia (Litmus Press, 2009), as well as numerous chapbooks, including Orizaba: A Voyage with Hart Crane (Faux Press, 2008), Stacy S.: Autoportraits (OMG, 2008), and from Hart Island (Albion Books, 2009). From 1999 to 2005, she worked at Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee’s Riverwest neighborhood. In 2005 she moved to New York City where she is the current Artistic Director of the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church.