3 Poems by April Salzano

The Little Engine Was Right
Going uphill is a slow process,
especially dragging everyone else’s baggage.
If you think you can, you will.
As long as you say it often enough,
anything can become Cartesian law.
Once you get to the top,
fuck anyone who didn’t stop
along the way.


The Parenting App
features a platinum upgrade that allows
infants to be plugged directly into
electronic devices while skills are downloaded.
Fortunately for the mothers who wish
to medal in the Development Races this year,
a new category has been created to separate
Change of Life Parents from Twenty-Year-Old-Reproducers,
who are clearly at a technological advantage. Much like
digital photography once replaced dark room
and negatives, iPad parenting allows milestones
to be reached in shorter time. The bar
has not been raised, it has been totally reconstructed.
Old-school mothers who are still using archaic
pencil and paper teaching methods and incidental
learning opportunities will likely not suffer the effects
of the failed interface that has begun to short
circuit children. While their parents surf the web
for a solution, their kids are contracting viruses
undetectable by automatic internal scans.
Because concern has been replaced by mild
levels of annoyance, no one seems genuinely affected.

Lives Change at Red Lights
At least in the movies. Hers is
a story of love and lust that smells
like love. She wears the distinct mark
of a furrowed brow that seems to be in style
these days, but only when she is with her husband,
before he murders her lover with a snow globe to the head.
In the end, they decide to stay together, cover each other’s tracks.
If she denies knowing the guy, he can get away with murder. In the car,
the light remains red long enough for them to reach this conclusion, decide
on Mexico, seal the deal with a kiss in their dinner party clothes while their child
sleeps in the backseat. When the camera pans out, the light is finally green, the police
station a blaring beacon beside them. Credits and music roll across an empty intersection.

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