POETRY

You are the one that wakes me

mid-sleep, coming in dreams

with after-effects that haunt.

My skin is alive

with remembrance of touch

recaptured briefly, then yanked

away like a sounding alarm.

Blankets shift and I am exposed,

guilty. You return in fragments

for days, frames to freeze in

black and white, bright

with the color of nostalgia.

Your image disappears in the light

of morning, bled thin by the end

of the day spent untangling nonsense

plots, secondary to glimpses caught

of context that used to be real, spliced

with imaginary endings, evers and afters

that did not materialize.

By

April Salzano

Photogene

Behind my eyelids is a snapshot

of last night’s dream, an imprint

of image burned with photo-clarity

My recurrent cult leader came

in different form. He was

not the usual Koresh-Hitler hybrid,

half husband, half father, all Freudian

terror, but younger. My stomach bulged

beyond disguising, hiding.

My son had been chosen.

My captor opened my middle like a door,

first one layer, and then thinner second,

pale as a water dog’s third eyelid peeled

back to expose my baby, pink, perfect

and fully formed. Fetal. Oily cheek touched

with one finger, confirmation.

He was taken. Lightning flashes strobed

the room, shook a chest

of drawers behind which I crouched

waiting for sutchers to shut me.

Electricity equaled procreation.

I was filled with substitute seed.

When I woke, all I knew of this world

was the words to repeat,

the mistake to repent.

By

April Salzano