3 Poems by Valentina Cano

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The selkies in her head

have woken,

reaping shells as she takes the bus.

The woman feels the turn,

the ebb of sand under her thickening heels

as she looks out of the pocked window.

She thinks herself away from the salt

working its way into her lips,

burrowing like ticks.

Her whole face ripples with the voices.

With the whispering waves

dragging her back.

Statue of a Woman

There’s a statue by my house

that does not stop screaming.

It shrieks with a bird’s voice,

filling the air about it with

grounding nightmares.

It was one of them, once,

before feathers calcified around it,

its weight an anchor,

its lungs bricked up with lead.

Coral, in Metamorphosis

My room becomes a crystal wave each night.

A fish’s tail presses to the ceiling,

turning itself into a crescent moon.

I breathe in my underwater chamber,

dreaming myself into seashells and sand.

Valentina Cano is a student of classical singing who spends whatever free time she has either reading or writing. Her works have appeared in numerous publications and her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Web. Her debut novel, The Rose Master, will be published in 2014.