Three Poems by Valentina Cano

Three Poems by Valentina Cano

Botched Rehearsal

The absolute truth is that
none of you fit with me.
Your skin was sandpaper against mine,
gritting dirt into my pores
in an unending flux of dominance.
Your eyes were too wide
to focus on me,
only peering at the scenery
with cardboard trees
swaying in a static breeze.
Your hands, your feet,
aberrations of flesh,
horns and hoofs in pale swaddling
that glisten in a drop of light.
The makeup and mask
sliding a smidge to the right,
your curl of a smile
glinting out at
my screaming, retreating form.

Hemispheres

Lines in sand or in hair,
lines that block you and me
from our own skins.
Lines written in trimmed fingernails
and scabs made from shoes that were too tight.
All things we thought would pull the
other down the weathered footpath.
And yet,
the lines are not blurred
as they promised,
but stark and grooved with puddled blood
and with names curled up like
hair around a drain.
These lines, ours,
will never bend or waver
with the ripple of years.
We are where we are,
on opposite sides
of a pencil stroke.

Years

She’s repeated the same nightmare,
the same whirlpool of stagnant water
sucking numbly at her brain.
She pauses as she walks,
as if pecking crumbs off the sidewalk,
a breeze full of needles puncturing her eyes.
No one smiles as she walks,
no one notices her bleeding ears,
her dripping years,
like ragged water balloons,
splashing moments on the floor.
At the most, a dog
will turn and look,
smell her shoes,
those old soldiers,
strapped loyal to her stork-like ankles.

Author’s Bio: 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, Magnolia's Press, Cartier Street Press, Berg Gasse 19, Precious Metals and will appear in the upcoming editions 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, Super Poetry Highway and Perhaps I'm Wrong About the World. She can be reach at: valca85@aol.com.