A Poem by April Salzano

The Real Story

I thought I had a story to tell
of quick death, of love
passing, of tragedy.
Eyes of a blue dog looked upon,
finally. Of finding and losing the one
person who knew me, who I could know
like a thought, completed, translated
into words at last, like the relief of dreams
that find their way into daylight, captured.
Of a bite not preceded by bark, what omniscience
failed to see. Of subliminal-
probably, unspoken as the breath
of heat made real, then consumed by its own
fire, burned alive. That was not my story.
Mine was one of survival, instinct
rather than will. Flight
rather than fight. Not territorial
pissing, but leaving a marked place
as far behind as my heart can allow.



April Salzano teaches college writing in Pennsylvania and is working on her first (several) poetry collections and an autobiographical work on raising a child with Autsim. Her work has appeared in Poetry Salzburg, Pyrokinection, Convergence, Ascent Aspiration, Deadsnakes, The Rainbow Rose and other online and print journals and is forthcoming in Inclement, Poetry Quarterly and Bluestem.