THE ROMANTIC PERIOD BY IAN CAPPELLI

Was it for years so clear to them? Once

Laying to me fogged like frost flecked frigid ponds

Laying deep within a kaleidoscope of withdrawn exchanges,

Exchanged for so long

My parents can only French kiss in a museum

I’ve seen them hold hands in the Louvre and the Met

Framed and nailed

And hung like genitalia

Castrated and gelled

And jarred next to Napoleon Bonaparte’s

Their passion: paintings

Dried, set,

Finished

Placed somewhere amongst the Roman or Romantic ages

Displayed beside (the other) vestiges

And with that thought I felt, again, infantile,

Yet also older and at funerals

Like the time we killed the moon’s face

In elementary school.