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Saturday, July 18, 2015

April Salzano With Absent Aura And The Color Of Silence

Because Laundry

isn’t something you do,

it’s something you wear, clean

clothes are easy to take for granted.

Because dinner isn’t something you make,

it’s something you eat, a full gut

is just another need fulfilled.

Because pleasure isn’t something you give,

it’s something you take, sex

has become a lot less frequent.

Because poetry isn’t something you write,

it’s something you read, value

isn’t borne of words.

Because respect isn’t something you earn,

it’s something you demand,

you stand tall enough to cast a shadow.

Because time isn’t something you make,

it’s something you lose, days

always end against your will.

Because angry isn’t something you get,

it’s something you are,

forgiveness is a word you do not understand.



To Cross or Not to Cross


fingers, bridges, boundaries.

The stillness is rhetorical. There

is no answer, no salvaging

punctuation to bottle. Neck

in hand, I begin to lose,

first sight, then sound, tunnel down

into a blue-blank that turns

white as absent aura.



legs, time, over.

The fall was inevitable. Here

is the answer, a saving. Grace

escapes me last, just before

anger and survival

instinct. I remember the dark

cavern of yesterday not as a time,

but as a place, a space occupied

by twins, conjoined at the soul.

I go black when I have travelled too far

into memory’s cave.



eyes, my heart, distance.

The infinite becomes reached

and realized, epiphanic in its vision.

Between is home, neutral

territory for words at war. Behind

my enemy’s lines, I wave

a white flag. Drowning, I

stop the futile flapping

of arms against a current

stronger than both of us.




Hearing Here

The color of silence is caramel,

a sticky nothingness dragged through

by repetition of sounds that have already passed,

a trick the brain plays to create stimulation.

A bird chirping, house settling as if breathing

a pause, a pipe, a floorboard, random tap. Repeat

sounds until I can no longer resurrect them

from memory and listen to noises from my own

body. Ears ring a high pitched tune, almost

an octave above capture. Eyelashes scrape

against pillow. Blood moves heavy to heart

and back. Cilia whistles in nasal cavity.

Circular sound of breath. The pattern

won’t hold. Saliva swallowed. Fridge hums.

I imagine traffic a mile away rolling

toward some irrelevant destination.

Woodpecker knocks on dead trunk.

Eyes open and it all disappears.


April Salzano teaches college writing in Pennsylvania and is currently working on a memoir on raising a child with autism along with several collections of poetry. Her work has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Award and has appeared in journals such as The Camel Saloon, Centrifugal Eye, Deadsnakes, Visceral Uterus, Salome, Poetry Quarterly, Writing Tomorrow and Rattle. Her first chapbook, The Girl of My Dreams, is forthcoming in spring 2015 from Dancing Girl Press. The author serves as co-editor at Kind of a Hurricane Press (www.kindofahurricanepress.com).