Addictions

The need I feel is not audible

but it pounds its fists against

my egg-shell skull,

trying to break out in a spill of yellow goo.

It pinches me as I lay down,

twisting my legs up,

veins knit like cables in a sweater.

It knocks my cups to the ground as I cross the room,

poltergeists of anger and shining failure.

 

If I could shut it up,

in a cage, in a closet, in a dust bin,

I would tear away the film that chokes,

swipe it away like an empty spider’s web,

grind it tightly with my heel.

 

This need will kill me,

pointy toes and wire hair sawing me away.

 

Valentina Cano is a student of classical singing who spends whatever free time she has either reading or writing. Her work has 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 of A Handful of Dust, The Scarlet Sound, The Adroit Journal, Perceptions Literary Magazine, Welcome to Wherever, The Corner Club Press, Death Rattle, and Perhaps I’m Wrong About the World. You can find her here: http://coldbloodedlives.blogspot.com

Tagged poetry