Two poems by Valentina Cano

Second-Hand News

I watch you frown,
processing words

over a thread of static,

of twisting electricity.

You pause and hold

your breath

like a fist to your chest.
The words race through you,

through me as well,

though you don’t see it.

Your face,

a tomb of moments,

taking me with it.

+++++++++++++++++

Ouroboros


Repetition is a face,

a movement like a sparrow’s shoulder

bladeshifting in flight,

the color of your hair (screaming sunset).

But I know that it is pointless,

checking off one twitch,

one syllable raised like an exclamation point

over your head.

No matter how many times I rip

your words apart,

I will never find

the sounds I want.

I’ll just keep ripping and ripping.

Endless loops of nothing.


Author bits:

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, Vine Leaves Literary Magazine, Avalon Literary Review, Caduceus,White Masquerade Anthology and Perhaps I'm Wrong About the World. You can find her here: Carabosses Library