Purchase His Books

Launched in April of 2023, his latest collection:

Casting Out

“Casting Out chronicles the author’s entry as boy, progression through and eventual exit, as an adult, from the Pentecostal world. It’s an attempt to reconcile the evidence-based reasoning of the speaker’s present with the angels and demons of his past. This collection confronts what it means to be loved in a system that the speaker now finds not only irrational but hateful. The poems address the struggle to raise children in the absence of spiritual beliefs and contemplate the questions of whether imparting secular values is enough of a foundation, and how much should a child — even if it is back towards the religious tradition the speaker has left behind — be permitted to find her/his own path.”

Excerpt from this book:

For Then Shall Be Great Tribulation

Bank cards are the beginning,
Mom says. The Antichrist will make sure you can’t buy food
without his number tattooed on your arm.
Grandma sits beside me in the back seat;
says, six, six, six, as if completing
one of her crosswords. Dad pumps the gallons,
dwelling not on the opening
of the Seals of Judgement
nor on the sun turning black
as sackcloth, but the development
of prime real estate outside Wakefield,
Rhode Island. They are already turning
against Israel, Mom says. Whatever
you do, you must never, never, side against Zion.
Won’t matter anyway, Grandma says, we’re all going
to be taken up. Except your father, giggles Mom,
as he climbs up into the van; he doesn’t respond
although he can guess, and this
has been a nine-hour drive
already. Goddammit, the end times
at a Sunoco in Cheektowaga. Is she gonna talk
about this all day? For Christ’s sake. Harriet, would ya stop,
he’ll eventually say
loudly, and maybe she’ll stop.

Or she’ll take a long sip
of her Pepsi through the straw, peer
down the remainder
of the I-95 and decide the rapture
could happen over the Peace Bridge.
And then, poor Vito—suddenly alone
in all that quiet.

Click here to purchase the book from the publisher.
Click here to purchase the book from Amazon.

 

Released in the Winter of 2018, his Latest Collection:

Brace Yourselves

“Brace Yourselves is, in part, a language experiment with poems assembled from internet material then juxtaposed with confessional pieces de Giacomo uses to come to terms with fatherhood in the new millennium and the death of parents and friends. Brace Yourselves consists of these two divergent but inseparable parts working together to create a representation of individual experience as it relates to the Zeitgeist. What better way to represent the spirit of the times than with the internet and its multiplicity of languages.”

Excerpt from the book:

Strength in Battle

I scoop you from the oak water tub as if
from a house fire; still attached to your mother
by a coiled telephone line, you come up full of late
Autumn, a fight in an old kitchen, the oxygen burning
through your seabed skin. The midwives no doubt

will roll their eyes at how I describe things. Me,
the hero. But there you are, Matilda; you, an element
glowing in a cold room. This is emotional. The birthwater

that streams down my arm is a river in Cape Breton
in the fall; this could have been disastrous, a dead call from a dirt road,
the last sight of someone I love, but
in heroic fashion (I think, at least),
I dig deep, reach through and pull you close, your skin
smelling like a good day for raking leaves.

Contact the author at roccodg@gmail.com to purchase a copy.

His second collection of poetry:

Every Night of Our Lives

“The twin themes of domestic adventure and dreams work together in Every Night of Our Lives to create a tactile and brightly coloured odyssey of the mundane. At times harrowing and sombre and at other times humorous and bizarre, Every Night of our Lives provides a meaningful account of middle-aged life in the new millennium.”

Excerpt from the book:

Every Night of Our Lives

i.
In dreams
houses are ends
of sad tales; a lantern’s
glint in a parched land. The first touch
of rain.

ii.
Outside
each dream window,
a small abyss: memory
waiting closed-mouthed. The sting in its
blue lips.

iii.
Nothing
is spared, trees are
here, just where their leaves touch
your face. Each, a fossil brush, drawing
you out.

iv.
You burn;
emerge bright
and trembling, a fierce
unfolding: you, dead to your own
secrets.

Contact the author at roccodg@gmail.com to purchase a copy.

Also, Praise for Ten Thousand Miles Between Us:

“De Giacomo distils the existential horror and beauty (often at the same time) buried within the most seemingly mundane events. He does this with such effortlessness that I suspect he slips quite by accident beneath the surface of things, modestly and generously revealing to us what he has found there. … These poems are authentic, surprising and refreshingly relevant.”

– Jacob Scheier, author of the Governor General’s Award winning More To Keep Us Warm

Excerpt From the book:

So Close

I walk for an hour
along the gravel breaker
between swells of wheat,
each step sinking deeper
into the aquarium calm:
enormous bodies above me,
armada-white and trailing
the sun, their wake
trickling down the shadow
of my back. Intimacy
is a mute exchange
with the immeasurable,
and returning
I am drained,
breathless, stumbling up
the wooden steps, tearing
a toenail in the process.
The pain, unanchored,
drifts away.

Contact the author at roccodg@gmail.com to purchase a copy.