Count the Dark, by Noah Anthony Mezzacappa

Poetry, chapbook, 40 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

An old man runs his fingers through a candle flame. A young boy carves a crucifix into his skin. A dream brings back memories of a haunted house. ‘I told you, right? That / I’ve been wearing my glasses / again.’ So begins Count the Dark, a collection of poems intent on unearthing what would rather stay hidden: the word on the tip of the tongue, the thought in the back of the mind, the shape in the corner of the eye.

Set against a backdrop of highways, nursing homes, and ghost towns, the twenty-three poems in this collection present an array of characters and narrators both foreign and familiar, each of whom is confronted with some form of loss—of love, of life, of sense. In its wake they all struggle for solid ground, only to find more water beneath. At its core, Count the Dark asks us, what’s left in the space left behind?

Noah Anthony Mezzacappa is a Brooklyn-based writer and filmmaker from Knoxville, Tennessee. He is a graduate of New York University, where he studied film production and English literature. His most recent film, Bones, premiered at the Nashville Film Festival and is now available to stream. In addition to his narrative work, he is the in-house video director for New York label Chinatown Records. He is a huge fan of hip hop, Jason Isbell, and 99¢ pizza. Count the Dark is his first collection of poetry.