Readings at Parkside:
Stacy Szymaszek


The Parkside Lounge
317 East Houston Street
New York City

Sunday, April 16th, 5pm

Stacy Szymaszek is the author of seven full-length books, most recently The Pasolini Book (2022) and Famous Hermits (2023). Her chapbook Three Novenas was published in 2022 by auric books. She was the director of The Poetry Project from 2007-2018. Since then, Szymaszek was the Hugo Visiting Writer at the University of Montana-Missoula 2018-19, Poet-in-Resident at Brown University, Visiting Poet for the Fire Island Artist Residency - and the recipient of a 2019 Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant in poetry. She currently lives and works in New York’s Hudson Valley.

THE LIVING ROOM 

this is a film about the wheel of fortune
(Elevator to the Gallows)        Jeanne Moreau’s
expression is the same before the police get wise
and after        I AM MAD       the long takes encourage us
to empathize with madness

six days since the ball dropped in Time Square
but you and I don’t count that way

six days of French New Wave
animate black and white photos of us in high school
we are lovers on a spree for a day in 1986

therapeutic-watching of Cleo from 5 to 7 
hate-watching Jules and Jim 

(mesmerized by the new presence of TV
a motionless child on its lap
life with TV resumes after a decade gap) 

it is absolutely necessary to die…for the lightning quick
montage it performs on our lives!