Kenneth Salzmann
Say No More
I intended to say
we share words as well,
although it takes just two of us and a common language
to articulate a tower. That we are forever at a loss,
More like that Sunday magazine article
on dying languages in Patagonia
than we care to say:
I asked her if she ever had
a conversation with the only other person
in the world who [spoke Yaghan].
No, Emelinda said impatiently,
The two of us don't talk.
You might have said we are forever tossing
sound about in places where ideas are gathered,
then drummed into senselessness.
That we are approaching the moment
when we will sit at a café table
telling secrets but speaking in tongues.
I intended to say we share words as well,
and the speechlessness of aged Yaghan women
hoarding icy words in a land of fire.
Blood Counts
In this polite
place:
A hand trained in the ways
of death and delivery
cups a pill, slides a gurney,
shrink-wrapped, bubbling,
through sterile chambers
overfilled with hints
of salvation served
on sheets of steel.
Suffering is silent here:
Purple or black fishes dart
in diversionary circles
at the backs of smiling clerks,
when blood counts
don't add up.
1969
If fifty thousand
candles can be
the waxy, whispered remains of dead boys
in a cold, November rain,
then Kilby might wrap this night
in chords seized from an acoustic guitar,
as if melody waits unformed
somewhere near the Ellipse,
as if harmony can settle the score
and not swell unexpectedly
thirty years from now when a blood-red BMW
points up the 101,
purposeful enough.
If a drunk and stumbling bum can insist
against the 2 a.m. terrors of Arlington Cemetery
that we imbibe his history
and heft an icy, dented mortar shell
made slick by the Potomac mist,
then Salzmann might write a poem
to reduce or enlarge
this rainy night of America's soul,
as if cadences tried out on the Mall
can settle into lines
that won't overstay their welcome
and float back insistently
thirty years from now when promises and poems
are petals scratched from southern soils,
then gone.
About the Author
Kenneth Salzmann's
poems have appeared in Rattle, Comstock Review, Riverine:
An Anthology of Hudson Valley Writers, The Sow's Ear Poetry Review,
Perigee, and elsewhere. He lives in Woodstock and Troy, New York. Previously
vice president of The Arts Center of the Capital Region (Troy), he is now associated
with Gelles-Cole Literary Enterprises, an editorial boutique serving authors,
publishers and agents, and is a consultant to non-profit organizations throughout
the country.
Acknowledgments:
“Say
No More” was first published in The Front Range Review; “Blood
Counts” originally appeared in Liquid Ohio; “1969”
has been published in The Peninsula Review and Afterthoughts.