lana valdez – 3 poems

I thought it was the first day of the year, and that I had only played the song one time, not a hundred times on loop. It was my favorite song, it was the only thing I could play at night to cool my running mind. I saw people walk past my window, five and then ten and then a hundred, and I thought of reading the wrong hymn, the silence that would hang in the air after, the pity. Maybe the man walking past my window would become important to me one day. I thought of the girl who liked olive oil on her pizza and ordered it every day for a year, how sometimes, after a long time, my sweat would stick to the covers. Maybe I would become important to someone one day, that they would see me in the window, trying to disappear, and ask me not to.

---

There’s something about the sweat, how it locks you in,

hair like a wet, wild dog.

An aching, not hunger but wanting to be full,

my hot breaths, writing words on your skin.

In a room full of ceramic gods and guitars covered in white cloth,

you bared your teeth, your eyes and my eyes, and

I knew what to do with my hands.

You hold me by the jaw, prying open, and you want to go deeper,

all red skin and raw lips, missing teeth.

---

In a playground in a village by the sea,

something cracks. It’s not the ruins of muddy plaid skirts,

or the seashells that found their way from the main beach,

but this little mania.

A leader, who is fearless and fly-esque,

leads them all through the darkness-

and they’ve been waiting for this, for a long time.


LANA VALDEZ is a Florida-raised poetess and sometimes filmmaker living in Southern California. Her work has appeared in Dream Boy Book Club, Spectra, High Horse, Expat, and others, and her short films and music videos are on her YouTube channel. She enjoys writing about the eschatological and the hungry.


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