American Cavewall Sonnet

This is my box of twilight and inside

is everything that disappeared when

we weren’t looking like glaciers and God,

the lonely astronaut waving as she

drifts from one starfield to another. Here’s

the stone I found that glimmered in my hands

like a promise made mineral. My name

the frozen lake my body treads across.

This time, I’ll walk into the house and ask

why my hands feel so dirty. A rose pinned

to my shirt like a throbbing ear, an ear

listening to the wreckage scraping at

the bottom of your words. The candle flame

like a tongue asking the room for water.


C.T. Salazar

C.T. Salazar is a Latinx poet and librarian from Mississippi. He’s the author of the micro-chapbook This Might Have Meant Fire (Bull City Press), and the Editor-in-Chief of Dirty Paws Poetry Review. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Review, The Cincinnati Review, RHINO, 32 Poems, Foundry, Grist, and Elsewhere.