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Tim Peterson
I'd like to offer you two texts:
1) My Intro to Stacy Szymaszek's reading at Segue:
In her new book Hyperglossia, a key text for our time, Stacy Szymaszek embarks upon a multi-persona allegorical narrative whose serial variations embody sound and experience: "trap earth neath pater." Fragments of partially swallowed diction allow several (possibly contradictory) realities to manifest themselves simultaneously. The reader is interpellated among linguistic fragments as sounds dispersed in composition by field, a textual body whose "larynx / is a mimic." A transgender-tending self is simultaneously negated and multiplied through alternating moments of empathy and critique. Szymaszek's third person avatar Eustace is a sympathetic sort, a public persona with his own foibles which map equally the poet's interiority and the reader's projections about what he might correspond to, reminding us that the interior is always public, and that public language is always creating an interior. The lavender pirate flag of this you-stance becomes both a "shroud" and a "splendid tour," and the fluidity of its anagram ("a cut see," "ate cues," "sauce et") truly manifests as "an ailment I will fight with." We're pleased to welcome Stacy Szymaszek to the Segue Reading Series today
2) A poem "My Figure of Inward" in which I incorporated some of Stacy's language from email conversations (with her permission of course).
My Figure of Inward
for Stacy Szymaszek
You don't strike me as particularly flaming. Thank you. Making a bathtub feel more vast, the scale of intimacy all but impetuous. A place against which the darling trace falls, ship's full gist.
You're lucky I'm such an organized lesbian. In this scene I give that submerged face kudos, for being the hero. One of many, you'd say. Hunk pomade, dashing punk, a gentle lubber's understood torque. All of my queeros are rushing toward that open sea. The bubbles thus emitted tingle down the length of my multiple nervous sites, the highlights. A fairy where you'd expect to see an anchor.
O sister gendernaut of water, pulling me crestless out of a submersion too occipital for a little tougher time than other folks. For example, I could say I have a thing for Kate Winslet, and we'd both understand that, an indelible mark imbued with fresh glam. Maybe we can drop some glitter in the guac. Glam jam, glam sorbet, glam roast. All the best lines are yours, yes dysmorphia except I always think I'm a CK model.
Thank you for saying my boobs look real. The water of which my body is composed, your clothes, a kind of spiked mascara on the lashes. Just as many filaments make up an eyebrow, now, a genuine plea appealing solidarity. Bring on the hets! You say that to all the girls. Because my two little boys get tired out, or inverted. It's one long winding cock serpent. And of course it extends its tentacles into language which is the vehicle of power.
Afloat in this partition, we are not the monsters that surface briefly for the others. Confrontation becomes essential to the extent that an arched eyebrow holds the prow. I love my lumberjack shirt. Who is speaking among the bubbles, but they are employing some extra loop-de-loops. Caravaggio and Parmigianino guard the gaze. There is no looking away, se camper.
I hope to see your zombie self in an hour, even though you won't be showing off those nice gams. This has been a very enjoyable young man. My wobbling name: clothing in a still-frame container, body like water, through and with my gesture which ascends to you now through the surface of the page. Breaker, breaker. We're ablaze.
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