James Capozzi
Decline of Spain
I.
eyes in the peacock’s plumage align
with mine
stigma and style suck at the rumored sun
we live by certain rules, by parvenu
emerges from
a wild interior and lowers
her face
into our palms
wide as this outdoor
room wherein we
get discovered
II.
we ride, dying
this raft
under mangroves
and captors
down a river
we’ve deserved: imperious
and goes wandering through
a land that’s all
farm, its sermon
and psalm
whispered in
the lavish vines
I already feel them
living over me
every day I float
they grow
A Wealth of White Poses
It’s a partisan’s fate / this souvenir pace
This danse enormous / a malaise enables
Don’t blame the church / for this enormous morass
Its feral danse tramples obscure peoples
I’m ripest church / vine of pleasure
Sick of this degraded era
No sigh nor sob expelled from
No paradisal orchard
The lands retrace instead of maps
The archive believes instead of time
The world’s displaced / by a revolt
We certainly are swallowed by one day
Among the other slaves
Begging to begin, to break
Moved to tout death before entering it
A matin, by little postures puts
Beneath one foot a heart the other a face
Without anguish or language, with
faith in every posture
Even the sea’s lessened another white quiver
Renfield, I
For you this goodbye my monster my sergeant
with whom I rose up into war
Who listened as my agent
to my nest of feckless memories
of the voyeurs at that dirtiest hour
Where our names were furious verdicts
where you remained
an absolute portrait
For you this goodbye sir my sergeant
who may never know defeat
James Capozzi lives in Binghamton, NY. His book, Country Album, won the New Measure Poetry Prize and will be published by Free Verse Editions in 2011.