Three Poems by April Salzano

Masterless Slave

I am a contradiction,

oxymoronic. Shade of no tree, sunless light

in blank-canvassed sky. I leave footprints

without grace of sand. I sing,

devoid of voice, arias of silence

in languages that cannot be

translated. My lungs are full of breathless

air. My kings have all been dethroned.

If you pay attention, you will see that

I mean nothing I say. I am everything.

Garden Hoe

I fuck for flowers.
He is filling my garden now
with the brightest purple pansies.
He tills the earth in the bed, better
dirt raked up to fertilize. Spores
will catch the wind and ride
to greener grasses.
Pollinating progression breeds
more blooms, spreading wide
my intention to color the world
in temporary shades of lusted hues.

Childhood is a Collection

of sounds, mine is the wait
for noise from another room, animals
grunting, suffocating on each other’s air.
I hear water running when it ran
down holes in various thirsty sinks,
choking on throated bezoars. If I listen,
I hear the rats walking drunk on confusion
through newly-dug sewer tunnels, lost.
Their scampering is a message I cannot
translate from the heavy house of memory,
the empty walls of regret.

 

 

 

April Salzano teaches college writing in Pennsylvania where she lives with her husband and two sons.  Most recently, she was nominated for two Pushcart prizes and finished her first collection of poetry.  She is working on a memoir on raising a child with autism.  Her work has appeared in journals such as Convergence, Ascent Aspirations, The Camel Saloon, Centrifugal Eye, Deadsnakes, Visceral Uterus, Salome, Poetry Quarterly, Writing Tomorrow and Rattle.  The author also serves as co-editor at Kind of a Hurricane Press.