Susan Pizzolato is a poet, editor, and librarian living on the southcoast of Massachusetts.
About:
Poetry Publications:
Interests:
Current projects:
MFA program, Brooklyn College, first year
MFA in Creative Writing (poetry), Vermont College
Instructor, composition and literature, Bristol Community College
Creative writing teacher in Wareham, MA public schools,
M.L.I.S. Library Science, University of Rhode Island
Career as a public librarian, library administrator
Editor: memoir, fiction, poetry, and co-editor of The Onset Review
1. Manuscript with working title: As/Is.
2. Manuscript with working title: Patrons, Saints. Includes poems about readers, reading, libraries, the physical book as object, book banning, serving the reading public, and the non-readers too, the powerful and the powerless who may just want to use the restroom.
Chapbook: Give & Take. Anchorage Press (Canada).
Poems in Permafrost, Zeugma, The Writer’s Corner, and other journals.
I am interested in writing reviews of poetry books for publication, so if you’d like to chat about what journals and blogs you like, who you like to read, and how I can help get the word out about your new or newly published book, please contact me.
If you need a beta reader, send me your draft and what your questions are. I’ll turn my comments around quickly. And inexpensively. Contact me.
Send me an email. susanjpizzolatopoet@gmail.com
Find me on Bluesky, or Instagram, Facebook.
I’m a pen-and-pencil person, so write me. I’ll write back.
Email for mailing address.
Contact
Poems
Let’s Talk
Who else has offered, in writing, details of their exact girlhood—
That’s how it was—and can still chuckle and go
on to slant the next young insult? All the pain in
smeared lipstick, like period blood on the back
of my work uniform, not my first offense on the job
on the job, of course. Hordes of us
have been touched, and lived, sort-of,
hanging out by the side of the dank town pool,
not swimming today (not ever) we told the instructor,
letting the cement edge scratch the back of our chilled thighs,
hidden under a wet towel, big windbreakers flapping,
leaning on the aluminum chaise, watching, fingers playing
piano on the scratchy plastic webbing, plaid empty
beach bag, just diet soda, god forbid eating in public.
FOR YOU I PLAYED A SORROW SONG
I’d like to uncover the lilacs
from the briars and spiderwebs,
so we could hide under them together again,
like when we abducted our baby dolls and snuck out,
defying our mothers, who languished in the doldrums.
We cradled our babies and pretended to lactate
until my brother, who just got home from detention, said:
You imbeciles: those dolls look like papier-mâché baleens.
Everybody has to eat, I thought, but chose
to deflect that come-back, so not to roil him
beyond what we could handle.
Still, every node on your spinal cord
wanted to shellac him, I know.
We were so so sick of his bony silhouette,
holding everything over us.
Let’s atomize him, you whispered,
peering through the bush’s web filaments.
I knew we could do it. I whispered back: Just wait.