Eileen Myles and Stacy Szymaszek

Eileen Myles was born in Arlington, MA and moved to New York in 1974. Her Inferno (a poet's novel) is just out from www.orbooks.com. For her collection of essays, The Importance of Being Iceland, she received a Warhol/Creative Capital grant. Sorry, Tree is her most recent book of poems. In 2010 the Poetry Society of America awarded Myles the Shelley Prize. She is a Prof. Emeritus of Writing at UC San Diego. She’ll be Hurst professor at Washington U, St. Louis in November 2010. She lives in New York. For more information, visit www.eileenmyles.com

It’s very hard
to hunt
from indoors
I’ll say that for
you. And
text is
at best
an attenuated
warning
sound has
a range
of many desires
not just map.
I subscribe
to the grandpa
bunny bunny school
of theory
I mean genesis
to write
is a form
of accounting
& approximate
promise
in the sunny
mouth of
time. A horny
bet. Or else
hunters
lolling around the fire
what did you
get. Why must
we avoid it.
This “making
a speech.” Long limbed
& maybe
in July. Aren’t
we lucky to have
captured each
other in this
hideous neon light.

—Eileen Myles

Stacy Szymaszek was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin .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. In 2005 she moved to New York City where she is the current Artistic Director of the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church.

‡
they sleep at his feet
where they would be misty
weather and dust meld
denim into skin
yellow high tops they
sit on him incubate
contact with cellular
device hawking Kewpies
was innocuous before
the chipped slate darling
draws the fangs of philanthropy
they don’t read eye-level
words where the eyes would be
where the signs are e-
clipsed where the roses
snapped the twine
‡
kid needs to grow into
his feet wants to be the last
American playboy will
still touch the arm of his
sidekick the psychic got new gold
trim economical extraction from
twilight customers WE BUY your
broken chains get two bruised
pears from the new all-night cart
cable access pop-in this pineapple
filled with vodka is also very
good for Fire Island
‡
best star sighting director
of neighborhood vampire
flick the horror of being alone
with a paramour who sleeps
with an open left eye the avenue
is lined with craft service
stations giant flat screen of hands
making sashimi opt to eat
with the men served by Polish
women in peasant shirts very few
who knew you in the 80’s can
bring themselves to know you
now watch
the three-legged rescues
get their evening walks

—Stacy Szymaszek