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

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

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