Stacy Szymaszek
Granzino the Second
the only sounds I heard last night were my boot steps
boiling water and the ringing in my ears that started
in 2002 I no longer reside within
a church or within earshot of bells lost friend
touched my face in a dream and I told her how lonely
I had been using ESP today I woke up to loping wind welcomed
another sound in the quietest mountain village
never any reason to force anything boots laced water
boiling my sociality stored banter
B: Am I being clear?
A: (from audience) Ya.
some knew this might be useful
to other people you have mastered
butch winter I wear animals
and gain new knowledge of my own body
as in what becomes of it
once glided down her
throat you are beautiful I want to take off your underwear
a crasser order undoes my shame so I am her King
with a twist a fir coronet lick her mid hriff
tame a faun Granzino
the Second
end stop biological fathers on westward trains
“but you shall not escape my iambics” the news is we are prone
to the prosody of torpor heartbeats they will never discover
all the liquids I poured were nearly black fernet coffee stout
either I am rock or tree to quietly free my poor history
an eggshell in Polish amber
What I Attach to are Her Decimals
coffee aroma fueled insomniac
dreams all ambition to vacate the premises in 7 days
in 1 piece
Tucson calling it’s all very old-fashioned
both Western and Medieval I am skirting the robes
tho cannot evade what my idolatry beckons
so I roster a chair
my weight made kindling a goblet that crashed off the sill
as I aired out perhaps made
in Art
and blood
on the microfiber
watched 2 documentaries on Kevyn Aucoin
and cried too much sounding some doomy pop theory about the cups
of queers raised in the ‘80s never
having a bottom FALSE BOTTOMS?! pour anything into us… do we
only become more self-contained?
Also Aucoin give us back our eyebrows
I am I because my eyebrows are knowing wolves
slabs of knowing
(you jerk)
I am a beautiful butch with
high cheek bones I was born to be good
at knowing
what I hate
ergo capitalism
as if dividing my things into further storage units
can obscure my consumer history books and beds and bikes
my body takes me on a ride
I effloresce
maintaining some cardinal grip
on concepts of why funders fund #1-3 boil source into ethos
6 figures your salvation –
no the toilet you went down to find it
overflows
there are many who make
their dissent palatable and they will keep
bearing children
white tail specks on the mountain
red tail speck in the sky from a tub I won’t see the likes of
my sottoprogramma of laxity
let us to our royalties
my home on the edge of another campus
where my love notes passersby taking pictures of the purple cactus
and reports that a larger Bialetti makes her
wonder if she has shrunk
what I attach to
are her decimals
the infinity of ways to kiss any inch of her
and knowing
any inch of me is knowable to her
Stacy Szymaszek is the author of six books of poetry including A Year From Today (2018) and Famous Hermits (2021). She is currently writing more books in New York's Hudson Valley.