poetry by Valentina Cano

The Traveler

 

Back through symbols,

careening in a current

that pulls me downward

through time to the center

of this apple,

to the worm-pondered hole

into another space,

another choice like a colored ribbon

ready for my taking.

I pull and yank

at the trembling threads,

hanging like crisp clothes,

smelling of green air

and strawberry grass.

Back to that morning

when I stepped on the broken stone

splitting my life in two,

one always stuck

on the wrong side

of the crack.

I’m pulled,

ever backwards,

ever trailing my

ragged train.

-Valentina Cano

 

Machinations

 

I expected a bit more

than this crumpled thought

you’ve flung at me.

It landed with a thud,

the lightest mistake,

too skittish to pick up,

too ragged to put back together.

What I thought was my due

(a word that tingles with scents of charcoal

and worn music books)

has not crossed your mind.

Like a veil of desperate images,

it’s passed over you,

leaving you untouched.

You will never know what I want

and I will never tell you.

-Valentina Cano

 

A Meeting

 

The youngest bird perched

on the nest’s edge.

His feet like molded metal

gripped the twigs.

He looked at the window before him

with eyes that understood storms

but not invisible borders.

His eyes twisted in confusion

as he watched the shaped

moving behind the glass,

like fish under water.

He moved his head,

away,

and screeched at the chalky sky.

-Valentina Cano

 

Voyages

 

He lands like a mattress at my feet.

I gaze at a face made from

cloudless, translucent skies.

His face reflects the deepest greens,

slick grasses of thoughts.

His eyes, pools of melted driftwood,

hammered into place

with concentric words.

I stare at the land beneath me,

at the expanse of his body,

at the space,

the lack of it,

between us as we lay like floatation devices

on the waves of a room

we cannot escape,

in an ocean with no shore.

-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, 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, Stream Press, Stone Telling, Popshot and Perhaps I'm Wrong About the World. You can find her here:http://coldbloodedlives.blogspot.com