Carey Salerno is the Executive Director of Alice James Books, a nonprofit cooperative poetry press. She has a MFA in creative writing from New England College. Carey's poems appear on From the Fishouse, and in Natural Bridge, The Dirty Napkin, and Rattle. Her first book, Shelter, won a 2007 Kinereth Gensler Award. She lives in western Maine.

Erasing Digital Photos

I shouldn’t make you pollution―
what I mean is once I looked at and brushed your shoulder,
once you meant but did not slip your hand
.............................about my waist or did I dream it was our hips touching
and say it aloud to hold my fantasy?

When ice throngs upon the St. Lawrence, when I pose
upon the cannon within the row of cannons, I want the meadow
below packed snow to come forth in our presence.
.............................Don’t ask me as you scale down to the broken bank,

water cut to pieces how I like it, how I like my sandwich
in the shape of a star
and you cut it for me and serve the star and I mention I want softness
like the seat on the unused cannon you clear for me
.................................before snapping the photograph, my body black on the black cannon then
.............................made some proof we live.