A poet and teacher, David Cappella is an associate professor in the English department at Central Connecticut State University. He is the co-author with Baron Wormser of The Moves and of A Surge of Language: Teaching Poetry Day to Day. In 2003, he was the resident teacher/poet for the Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching. […]
I knew nothing, not the slow-motion billow Of cumulo-nimbus overhead, nor the infinite depth Of pale blue sky, not even the annoyance Of black flies. I knew nothing except fatigue – A joyous blur that fogged every word I hoped to speak or would again read Or wrap into the semblance of a thought. […]
They command from the pram, these children, in their nanny-powered strollers, little SUV’s that bully the walkways and rule the paths. They wield proud smiles from bikes with training wheels. They beseech half-awake, unshaven dads or tell their mother, “No.” They do not want to go toward the carousel. It’s the robin in the flower […]
I. Today, when air is heavy, thick with over-ripened thoughts, with the smell of sea lightly tingeing it with a salty taste of languor, the apocalypse unfolds. As I walk the bustling streets of New Haven, packed with sidewalk rug sales, with haunting notes from a blues harp, with oblivious college students, cell-phoned into their […]
I have sunk to the bottom of my heart. Like a stone picked up from an old gravel road, tossed into a fast-flowing stream, mired in river bottom mud. The current that washes over me, perhaps forever, washes me in regret. I love a woman who does not love me. You pick up […]
La vita è triste ed io son solo. – Dino Campana The clothespin hangs on the gray line Halfway between the stolid oak and the house. I see an orange angel, perched like a bird, Solitary, still, as snow falls straight down. Its presence sags slightly in my mind, Suspended, as though […]
“There is no moment when you are not one thing or another.” – Anne Carson What do oysters care about sex? about making love? Bivalves buried in mud know only the dark, that eternal, immeasurable experience contained in salty fluid, in rubbery flesh, within a shell. The slide, slip, viscous shift of slimy […]