Three Poems by April Salzano

Of Moods and Mornings

I opened my eyes as the sun
fired a warning shot.
I broke my back on a moon
of my own making.
Where is the headlong happiness
I pledged myself in childhood?
I have only birds and cigarettes,
porches and promises.
Crows cry in unrelenting fog.
There are jackals in the driveway.
My bed is not a raft, but I am
drifting in the sea of another dark day.



Growing

These days are early.
I could still wake you.
Back when a nightmare
meant something, held meaning.
Your hands were a magic noose,
and I still sucked you,
and you still ate me.
My body was nearly new, birthless,
and your eyes told their squinting story,
refracted light as if for the first time.
The implication of laughter loomed
largest in our corners,
vined our rented walls.
Our floor was a mattress,
the windows, a metaphor for anything
but eyes.  We hung a mirror,
called it ours, rearranged the chairs,
took down all the curtains.
We outgrew that incubator,
walked surely into the mouth
of the moon, fingers unlaced
and all the furniture forgotten.
The whole house wept
to see us go.



My Body is Not a Chance

anyone is willing to take, save
the familiar men of nightmares
and domestic duty.  Aging,
I fatigue easily,
I am naked, worth less
than a decade ago, the blink
of two tired eyes.

April Salzano is the co-editor at Kind of a Hurricane Press and is currently working on a memoir about raising a child with autism, as well as several collections of poetry.  Her work has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in journals such as The Camel Saloon, Centrifugal Eye, Deadsnakes, Visceral Uterus, Salome, Poetry Quarterly, Writing Tomorrow and Rattle.  Her chapbook, The Girl of My Dreams, is available from Dancing Girl Press.  Her poetry collection, Future Perfect,  is forthcoming from Pink. Girl. Ink.  More of her work can be read at aprilsalzano.blogspot.com