Featured Poem • November 2014
Salamander
Alicia Cole
a black snake, he said, crouching in the dark; then, its tiny feet shuffled like smudges of oil crouching, our bodies echoed the night smoked in grey, his mouth quite clear my husband joined us, fingers loose at his hip; the salamander quickened its pace into the grass loose, my husband’s fingers clicking pictures, flick of a sinuous tail moistened, a baffled Pliny states, the salamander appears inside fire, its body draining the heat states: three mouths moistened, startle, the salamander dancing, dark and sooty lit like candles in the night, the light of our bodies tied, triumvirate; small creatures, struggling
Alicia Cole (pictured on an adventure with husband Roger) is a writer, an educator and an esotericist. Her poetry is forthcoming in Lakeside Circus, Liminality and Dawntreader; her prose is forthcoming in Torn Pages Anthology and Vagrants Among Ruins. She spends much of her time either freelancing or playing with a menagerie of animals. Updates on her writing and editing career can be found on www.facebook.com/AliciaColewriter and https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6470571.Alicia_Cole.
To explain “Salamander,” she offers the following: “I was struck by an image of my then friend smoking, an image representative of totemic transformation. ‘Salamander’ grew from this image and became an attempt to explain the complexity of developing a polyamorous relationship between myself, my husband, and my friend. Hopefully, the poem succeeded! As we’re still growing into this complex relationship, I’m certain they’ll each let me know if it did from their respective points of view.”
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