I Bequeath Unto Thee
Two excellent excerpts from Stacy Szymaszek’s fresh new book, EMPTIED OF ALL SHIPS (Litmus Press: 2005).
Thus begins my holiday campaign to encourage one and all to give the gift of poetry to their family, friends, and bosses — instead of predictably filling the list of their own prescriptions. Surprise them! And why not give them what they may not bump right up against, the most essential of all: poetry! Also, you are more than welcome to get on board here~
Happy Sailing!
_____________
…ballast
ceramic
Jesus
medallion
with chipped
features
contents
of a secret-
bottomned
drawer
yellowed
song lyrics
wax
phallus
mending
kit
Latin
dictionary
German
crossword
series
of curtailed
letters
my embroidered
misnomer
pouch
of dead
teeth
everything
from
China
guide
by a Polish
sailor
gold-plated
cabinet
handles
radio
apparatus
______________
…some mariners [excerpt]
the sail menders with hands
and feet repair into dawn
trailing bolts of canvas
maneuver fish needles in half light
reach top velocity in
pantheistic celebration
______________
let us not forget the restraints of
our vessel when in ash you enter
invertebrate sea
funnel into whalebone
form your love will seek
every plasm remembered
through my constant dream
–Stacy Szymaszek, EMPTIED OF ALL SHIPS
AMY KING View All →
Amy King is the recipient of the 2015 Winner of the Women’s National Book Association (WNBA) Award. Her latest collection, The Missing Museum, is a winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize. She serves on the executive board of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and is co-editing with Heidi Lynn Staples the anthology Big Energy Poets of the Anthropocene: When Ecopoets Think Climate Change. She also co-edited the anthology Bettering American Poetry 2015 and is a professor of creative writing at SUNY Nassau Community College.
