april salzano

Laryngitis


You stole my voice swallowed it
like a sleeping pill shot it
like a diverted medication snorted
it like an opiate thieved
it for your mid-life your crisis.
You left me a mute housewife
while you raped my muse
in the four corners of the world
the room the marriage. You slept in
pregnant pause while I died
inside the house that hatred built.
A decade of silence
is broken now. I have so much
to say.


April Salzano teaches college writing in Pennsylvania and is working on her first several collections of poetry and an autobiographical novel on raising a child with Autism. Her work has appeared in Poetry Salzburg, Pyrokinection,
Convergence, Ascent Aspirations, The Rainbow Rose, The Camel Saloon, The Applicant, The Mindful Word, Napalm and Novocain, Jellyfish Whispers, The South Townsville Micro Poetry Journal, The Weekender Magazine, Deadsnakes, Winemop, Daily Love, WIZ, Visceral Uterus and is forthcoming in Inclement, Poetry Quarterly, Decompression, Work to a Calm, and Windmills.