3 Poems by Valentina Cano

Childhood

The house had a roof made like thoughts.
Tangled up and furred,
the straw threatened to catch fire
each New Year’s.
We lived beneath it as mushrooms would,
four capped heads
growing in the dampness and warmth.
The gurgling of our soft limbs
the only needed sound.
A house lined with pebbles,
ones through which I used
to kick anger (the simplest of sieves).
A house crackling with all
we’d have to leave behind.


Chasing Zero

Thinner
A word that ticks inside me
like a beetle’s voice.
Croaks and sighs.
Less tissue,
less muscle,
less everything that pushes
against my sausage skin.
I want pockets of nothing,
air bubbles I can puncture open
and lay flat
like water-filled calluses.
The temptation
to be less to be more.


Palm Reading

The line slashing her palm
in two shouldn’t waver.
It should be a measure
of years of uninterrupted
breathing and brushing of teeth.
There should be no need
to gather time’s puckered edges
and sew them into clumsy patchwork.
Hoping seams will hold
another minute.
With luck, another hour.


Bionote

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 valca85@aol.com