Long
gray
street
after
street
they screech.
Metal leaves
on honeylocust trees
spinning
on great rusted trunks.
They cut.
We have to be invasive.
We have to shake it all off,
the trees and I.
Some of us weren’t planted.
Some of us pushed up around the unyielding
until it seemed we belonged.
We fooled them good.
© 2019 Renate Valencia. All Rights Reserved.
I’m a house.
Self-contained.
Windows for eyes.
Scenes
like sun-bleached photographs
filter in through panes
and frames and
I arrange them all like furniture
in the good living room.
Covered in plastic.
Accessible but protected.
© 1993 Renate Valencia. All Rights Reserved.
I obey you to command me
(discretely through little-voiced no not me protestations)
though now and then
a few minor sticks and stones
harm my bones
I’ll appreciate the gesture.
© 1993 Renate Valencia. All Rights Reserved.
you submerged me in a barrel of blackstrap molasses
with only a pinched straw
4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12
1,2,3
you gave me a plastic high
well not you
steroids.
so wonderful they’ll eventually kill you
(as all things unnaturally helpful)
one juicy bag to start
three tiny chasers
dex, you were something
an assassin’s assassin
but like a schoolgirl in a short plaid skirt
you were a tease
4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12
odd lines of bad code
working against my better neurons
that couldn’t right me
(i wanted soft cool tufts
of young grass to stretch out on
like an old cat
the earth take in my blood
the breeze dry a soaked body)
if i could remember what green
smells like
i’d be almost free
© 2018 Renate Valencia. All Rights Reserved.
The local paper where I used to live
said the furniture store on Route 6 was closing.
After 57 years.
I was there once.
The office part was like other offices
in small-town businesses
but it was 1980 so no computers
just desks with Rolodexes and phones and IBM Selectrics
and those green chairs people now call vintage and collect.
Two or three with the odd cardigan carelessly flung.
And happy coffee mugs.
One overhead light at the far end was on and there was no
heat and the drop ceiling tile above me was
not seated in its grid properly and
I kept thinking how I would
like to pop it back in.
It wasn’t usually cold in mid-September
but it was getting on to evening and
the Endless Mountains were swollen with fog, thick and dripping.
Not like the sweet whisper of the early morning kind that
graciously burns off with the first sun
but gluttonous.
(trying to outrun weather and dark in
such a small car and then loaded with boxes yet
I could have left in the morning
I could have missed class)
It was surely a community, this office.
The kind you see in places where everyone already knows
everyone outside of work anyway and family names carry privilege or burden
and there’s rarely a second act.
Where everything’s settled.
(take Route 6 clear to California, girlie
pretend it’s fine just smile like it’s fine)
When all the lights are turned on
when coffee is brewing
when ladies are wearing their cardigans
and friendly banter and phone conversations
bounce off the drop ceiling
when customers browse sofas and
salesmen engage them
and rain and tears
have dried up
it’s the unsafest time of all.
© 2017 Renate Valencia. All Rights Reserved.
My cat is in the hospital.
His Mother is looking for him
on tall shelving in the garage where
we store extra pots and pans
and stretched canvases
and a big box of diatomaceous earth.
And dozens of mason jars.
Where he’s never gone
and where he certainly would not be able to go now.
He can’t jump.
Not really.
He’s only five.
Cleo is desperate, though, and
doesn’t give a damn about the mason jars.
Now there’s a big, sturdy, no-nonsense girl.
Nothing delicate there.
When that cat lands, she lands.
It’s a solid act.
His movements have always been more float than thud.
Or fireball.
As smooth and silent and dead accurate an orange jumper as there ever was.
Cleo comforts herself by kneading in her bed.
She comforts herself in cat ways.
If our Puff becomes a wisp, how will we all keep from knocking down jars?
© 2018 Renate Valencia. All Rights Reserved.
Hello world.
It’s about time you stopped presenting yourself
all iPhone and Starbucks and wide-open aperture
with that perfect blur.
Your face looks flawless.
Your car is so shiny.
Your serving suggestion is luscious.
I’m not composed.
My salad is a mess.
My dressing is splattered onto the rim of my plate.
Even though I know you’re full of shit
I crop my spills.
I wipe away my wrinkles.
I mask my real life.
And I hate you for making me complicit.
© 2018 Renate Valencia. All Rights Reserved.