Carol Szamatowicz
~ Kit Carson

All the great nobodies come from Chicago: Henry Darger, Vivian Maier, and an avalanche of poets including Carol Szamatowicz. It appears as if Carol can write anywhere, doing anything. She’s resourceful, good with her hands, and questions authority but is a good listener. What she sees is what we get –– which is always more: “the eyes in your ears"; “I have married my big desk"; "don't want a house on a hill / the hill is enough." She's an explorer-discoverer-troubadour. If you don’t know Szamatowicz’s poetry, waste no time. Read immediately. Start with Bombs –– “bombs for other worlds in balance….”

–Kostas Anagnopoulos

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POEMS: 
Carol Szamatowicz ~ Across the Margin, 
Part One & Part Two

LAWN TROLL

The idea is to lighten the earth so it levitates.
    -Larry Fagin

I can’t tell if I live in a treehouse
or a shrunken clubroom
help me out here, Huck!
(odd complicity)
where’s the fence where’s the fight?
disobedience breaks away
we look human but nothing’s certain
not even the March of Dimes
my mental reserve is all show
the river has me boxed in
I sit blinking under a florescent eagle 
that oversees nothing

When I saw myself as a saint
there was a lot more fish and bread

Start simple take one step
the air needs conditioning
soon the water too
if you don’t love me
does that make me a bad one?
will you come back later
on your raft to save me?
if not why not?

KIT CARSON — Carol Szamatowicz
Printed in an edition of 300 copies, 2017.
$12.00 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carol Szamatowicz’s books include Zoop (Owl Press, 2001); Reticular Pop-Ups (Insurance Editions, 2004); and Blasting through a Hole in the Universe (Green Zone Editions, 2009), among others. Acme Rubbers is forthcoming from Insurance Editions. Born among ten siblings on the Southside of Chicago to a Montanan and a corn factory worker, Szamatowicz came solo to New York City as a teenager in 1972, settling in the East Village. She taught children and teenagers in NYC for thirty years. Szamatowicz has written in Culebra, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Greece, Spain, and Portugal. She currently teaches yoga at Yoga to the People and spends time writing between the West Village and Hudson, NY, where her daughter, Alex Malmude, lives.