Allow me to speak as I’d like,
ungluing my tongue from its
soggy crevices,
opening jugulars of soaking truth.
I do not ask you to bend to
the surge of redness,
no suicide required in my domain,
but I do need your eyes
moving their slow mouths in time
with my syllables,
their eyelash-doorways
sweeping sand away.

Allow me to feel what
I’m feeling,
a stomping of mud,
my heart squelching
like a soaked sponge.
I ask no more,
I accept no less.
A pyramid of words
howling at the sun.

[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. You can find her here: http://carabosseslibrary.blogspot.com]