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Valentina Cano
Ways Down
 
He watches me speak
like he would a falling cup,
in twitches and unspooling seconds.
 
I watch him speak
like a bird would a ruffled feather.
checking for the right currents.
 
He and I tug on the air between us,
which has suddenly filled
with words too stiff to
ever survive
flight or fall.
 


 
Author
 
She counts and picks out beads,
pouring them into and out of her hand.
Checking the ones that refuse
to tumble,
the ones that have split from the inside out.
The whole ones,
the ones with layers of colors
spread out into fans,
those are the ones she'll roll into place.
Slot by slot by slot.
 


 
Scene of Your Murder
 
I imagine your eyes
bleaching in the sun.
Upturned, they stare at where I stood,
now just catching bird's flights
in their pupils.
While the rest of you
darkens with water,
ripening into a bloated fruit,
your eyes dry out.
They dull and crack,
a pair of parched seashells.
 


 
Doppelganger
 
She stumbled over herself.
A version she'd not met before.
This one had a crackling ember
for a stomach,
burning her skin inside out.
This one had barbed wire for veins
and a pulse stolen from
a rattlesnake's tail
She was a woman of stones and leaves,
flesh torn away,
dripping off,
fat over a fire.


 
 
Planned Remodeling
 
If my fingernails were sharp enough,
I'd peel my skin like old wallpaper.
I'd pick out a corner,
where it puckers against my graying meat,
and yank it away.
I can't imagine blood or pain.
I see only the stuccoed veins and muscle,
plastered together
when all they want is to
collapse apart.
 







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


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