Stilled into action—
after being tailgated by a pickup with its high beams on: double casted shadows of the back of your head. Toddler muscling from the cloakroom which abuts a geothermal pool, before being hoisted over the shoulders of the immersed. A stethoscope locating your internal noises through a shirtsleeve. The speaker is beside themselves. Realizing your father is only ducking your calls because he went on a cruise without telling you.
Rain hangs coarse as coarse fur—
there is no adequate metonymy for “metonymy.” The recordings of jazz pianists are revised by a magnetic field. Chemical liquids are kept separate in what’s called a “separator.” As if the pianist is separated from the piano. In other words: The mountaintop inn is awash in revisions, in silver cobwebs and sun-filtered receipts. To be an image without a body.
Ian Cappelli’s work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets (2023), Beloit Poetry Journal, Bennington Review, Iowa Review, Smartish Pace, Blackbird, Florida Review, West Branch, Rhino, and Palette Poetry. A new chapbook, Another Longue Durée, is forthcoming from Vallum.
