Trust’s Melting Point

He talks as if from on-top an iceberg

that’s disappearing from under his feet.

His words are clipped,

a tap-dance of ice following his lips.

I’m supposed to trust,

to string his words into a necklace

good for every occasion,

but they melt away,

syllable by syllable,

leaving only stains on my dress.

-Valentina Cano

Flame

From snowbrains.com

I will set this house on fire.

I can feel it,

the anger lapping,

running up and down the hallways,

the rustling of flames.

Smoke, dark feathers of it,

filling the pillowcases,

the empty cups and bowls,

as walls begin to blacken.

Day by day,

the house surrenders to flammability

until even its dreams are scalding and red.

-Valentina Cano

Organ

This moment is rubber,

twisting slowly into shape.

The glare of it reminds me

of the tear that passes for a canal at home

with its trash-bag doilies.

The water still enough to be pus.

This morning,

with its smell of scraping matches

and unwashed hair

is molding itself into an organ.

A replacement

for the one I didn’t know I’d lost.

-Valentina Cano

Postcards from Anorexia-Land

Stepping on and off a scale

I lost what I was thinking.

It disappeared like the tissue and fat

that used to curl up like snails

around my hipbones.

Like the clumps of ashen hair I pick up,

spider webs clinging to bathroom tiles.

I have gone away,

handing skin and teeth and bone

to numbers and buttons and zippers.

I have lost.

Myself to myself.

-Valentina Cano

Betrayal

From ElizabethKreutz.com

The bicycle slips from under her,

as sleek and agile as she’ll never be.

It lands on the grass

with an exhale of gnats,

handlebar turned to the sky.

She kicks the spinning wheels,

the grinning chains,

jabs a stick into the links and snaps it.

The sound of it like a slap.

She leaves the bicycle there,

stabbed and staring,

and walks home.

-Valentina Cano

Valentina Cano is a student of classical singing who spends whatever free time either writing or reading. Her works have appeared in Exercise Bowler, Blinking Cursor, Theory Train, Cartier Street Press, Berg Gasse 19, Precious Metals, A Handful of Dust, The Scarlet Sound, The Adroit Journal, Perceptions Literary Magazine, Welcome to Wherever, The Corner Club Press, Death Rattle, Danse Macabre, Subliminal Interiors, Generations Literary Journal, A Narrow Fellow, Super Poetry Highway, Stream Press, Stone Telling, Popshot, Golden Sparrow Literary Review, Rem Magazine, Structo, The 22 Magazine, The Black Fox Literary Magazine, Niteblade, Tuck Magazine, Ontologica, Congruent Spaces Magazine, Pipe Dream, Decades Review, Anatomy, Lowestof Chronicle, Muddy River Poetry Review, Lady Ink Magazine, Spark Anthology, Awaken Consciousness Magazine, Vine Leaves Literary Magazine, Avalon Literary Review, Caduceus,White Masquerade Anthology and Perhaps I’m Wrong About the World. Her poetry has been nominated for Best of the Web and the Pushcart Prize. You can find her here: http://carabosseslibrary.blogspot.com

Making Things Better

Carol Smallwood

Excerpt from Lily’s Odyssey (print novel 2010) published with permission by All Things That Matter Press. Its first chapter was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award in Best New Writing.

http://www.amazon.com/Lilys-Odyssey-Carol-Smallwood/dp/0984098453

The next session, Doctor wore a suit for the first time, and asked, “How’d you like my new office?”

“It’s very nice,” he said, looking around the stucco room for anything that looked familiar.

A few years ago, the businessmen in town had decided to capitalize on the name, “Avon Creek”. The storefronts and municipal building were redone to resemble Shakespeare’s birthplace, and his comedies were performed at the fairgrounds during the summer. Restaurants offered old English fare and jesters and jugglers in colorful costumes gave street performances for tourists.

“Cal got angry because I was out picking apples with the kids and wasn’t home when he got home, so he shoved me around.”

“Did he hurt you?”

“He didn’t leave any marks.” I didn’t consider them marks because my sleeves covered the bruises on my upper arms.

“Do you think you were right in going?”

“It was right but not right in the relationship of marriage.” I sighed, and added, Cal doesn’t want me to get a job.”

“It isn’t wise to come to any crisis now.”

While canning corn relish, I thought again of what Doctor said about the law of compensation- when you lose something, you gain something. And I smiled at the comforting sound of canning lids sealing–no matter how many times I heard the ping, it satisfied an instinctual need. Kerr glass pints and quarts with neatly printed labels were very attractive when filled with pickles, relishes, pears, tomatoes–proof I’d accomplished something.

But the next day, I couldn’t stop thinking about worms dying in a can that Cal left on his boat after he went fishing; the only way to stop was to imagine being with Doctor. When I went anywhere, I looked at men to see if their nose, mouth, or walk in any way resembled his; I kept saying, hang on, hang on–remember the tree in the woods? Near the barbed wire fence of my grandfather’s- that was all dead, except for one branch? For the last two years, I’d gone to stare at it while the kids made a game out of not stepping on any sticks while chasing each other.

A few months later, I went for a walk with Mark and Jenny, muffled in my jacket, leaving the snowmobile suit matching Cal’s–Uncle Walt’s and Aunt Hester’s Christmas presents. The wind made it too cold to walk along the shore strewn with giant blocks of ice; a red strip on a lone freighter in the distant channel was the only thing preventing it from being a black and white painting. When I went to look for patches of moss on trees, Mark pointed out depressions in the snow, and told Jenny they were Bigfoot’s; Jenny pretended to be scared, and then smiled at me.

When we returned to the road, a sunbeam shone on the top of a large bent pine, and I walked back and forth looking at the large green question mark, till a hawk began circling. Mark had been scrambling up and down the snow heaped by the snowplow with Jenny trying to keep up.

We walked to the tree-lined winding stream, among the overhanging branches, until I heard water running under the ice. When I heard the water but couldn’t see it, I felt a great relief–a Plan must exist–things did make sense- and had a pattern; there was a way out, even if I couldn’t see it. I’d be OK. I followed the gurgling water to the lake and stood smiling in the biting wind while the flowing stream became part of the lake, and tears froze to my face.

At the next session when I told Doctor, “I’ve decided to stop coming,” his chair squeaked, and I knew how much I’d miss the sound. “I’ll always wonder what’s on the other side of things, but it’s equally bad not to enjoy what’s under my nose. Things are better with Cal because I want them to be, and if I left him, I’d still be searching–my feelings for you happened because I needed them to.”

After looking like he was trying to convey something he ended the long silence with, “You can come back.”

“There’s a job coming up I may be able to get,” I said, tasting the blood from biting my cheek. “I’ve enjoyed the sessions and will have to find something to replace them with.”

His face was still flushed when he said, “Maybe studying Hinduism would interest you and give some direction; I’ve told you about how meditation helped me. Begin with the Upanishads and books like this.” He reached for a book with a bald man in a gown, sitting cross-legged with thumb and index fingers joined, to form circles. He named strange-sounding men, but meditating by staring at a point between your eyes had little appeal for me. The Hindu women I saw on PBS didn’t look very well-off–and what did it matter if people may have had a third eye? Doctor concluded, “Take lots of walks because they may teach you more than books.”

On the drive back, I tried to forget his laugh when I’d said, “Things are better with Cal because I need them to be.”

Photograph by Hengki Koentjoro

Inky Milk

I’m lying on that beach
Frozen to the heart
What am I to do
In this sand this quick
In this night this dark?
The sea is crying over spilt milk
Black silk and sweet lactescence
Wave after wave
Song after song
Languid poems are rolling on the shore
A whisper, a caress and nothing more

 “Inky Milk” first appeared in The Electronic Monsoon Magazine, March 2012.
Virginie Colline lives and writes in Paris. Her poems have appeared in The Scrambler, Notes from the Gean, Prune Juice, The Mainichi, Frostwriting, Prick of the Spindle, Mouse Tales Press, StepAway Magazine, The Indian Review, Overpass Books, Dagda Publishing, Silver Birch Press, Yes, Poetry and Poethead, among others.

Kyle Hemmings lives and works in New Jersey. His art has been shown on sites such as The Stray Branch, South Jersey Underground, Heard, Otioliths, and The Bitchin’ Kitsch. He loves American Precisionism.

Limitless [a pantoum]

As another chip melts off my shoulder

I see there are no limit signs in Heaven –

I wonder, when I see the petals of a flower

In places which are desolate and graven

I see there are no limit signs in Heaven,

The creative stroke of word and deed

In places which are desolate and graven

Find themselves spreading to each need

The creative stroke of word and deed

Rooted by planting from our knees

Find themselves spreading to each need

And tower beyond the greatest of trees

Rooted by planting from our knees,

Branching from the vine of our salvation

And tower beyond the greatest of trees

By living water, sustaining our perfection

Branching from the vine of our salvation

I wonder when I see the petals of a flower –

By living water sustaining our perfection

As another chip melts off my shoulder

Dave Douglas is a poet and avid cyclist in Northern California. He may be reached at carpevelo@gmail.com