Salgado, Michael
Michael Salgado grew up in Allentown, PA and the Lehigh Valley region. He is a current student in Arcadia University’s MFA program and regularly attends and moderates the Montgomery County Community College’s Writing Critique Group. He is also employed as a Biologist with Merck & Co. Pharmaceuticals. Michael’s work has been published in the Northern Cardinal Review, the Wilderness House Literary Review, Lehigh Valley Vanguard and the Black Fox Literary Magazine. His work is forthcoming in The Stray Branch in fall 2015. Michael currently resides in Lansdale, PA.
BACK ALLEY
Michael Salgado
I strolled my childhood yard to the
end. Where the divide breaks
street blocks in two.
The Black Locust in the next yard,
two trunks spreading like thighs.
Neighbor boys nailed two by fours across
for a ladder to a small platform where
the legs opened wide.
Houses parted to make space for
our growth. The stump altar in
memory of the lofty Sugar Maple.
Toadstools an offering to
ninety years of growth in our
grassy section of alley.
This domain we roamed
as children. With small
fists we ruled. Stones thrown over
high picket fences into
pools. Dogs tortured through fences, sheds
snuck into, wood pile towers toppled.
Teepee home under the
ring of a pine. Poison ivy blisters,
ripped t-shirts, scratches across arms and legs.
The now rotted planks up the Locust tree,
one thigh had grown taller, slanting the ladder.