The September First Selected Poet is Angela Valdes

Please feel free to email Angela at: acain1839@gmail.com

DOLL IN THE WOODS

A dingy doll whose eyes have long since gone
sits atop a fence post naked
and exposed in the lonely woods

where the snakes creep.

Two hunters trudge in the dead of night
shining a flashlight like a lighthouse
warning a ship away from the cliffs.

Through the brush one hunter slices the silence
with a machete, back and forth crackling twigs
and detangling vines.

They wander the woods in search of a trail
that would lead to their kill, trickled
in the muck of brown leaves that cover
the plant life buried beneath.

The line of light scans through darkness
shining into the void of her eye sockets
and exposing her pale bruised skin.

Gun shots ring out as she flies off her perch,
“Good Shot,” one remarks in a dismissive tone.

As he turns his back to face his friend,
she reappears on her post.

A riverbed of sediment pours
from fresh bullet holes
and she cries faintly from the voicebox,
hidden within her frozen mouth.

MUMMIFIED IN MEMORY

Ninety-four years ago,
at a wrought iron bedside,
Mario Lombardi watched
his two year old daughter
draw her last exhaustive breath,
lungs filling up with fluid.

He couldn’t let go
until the world knew
her name. Commissioning
the aid of an embalmer
he witnessed the injection
of formalin and zinc salts
that dried and petrified her
frail frame so rigidly
she could be taken from
her casket, propped up
to stand by herself.

Like Briar Rose, she awaits
someone to break the spell—
she lies in silence, eyelashes
and curls still intact.
strangers file through
the Capuchin Catacombs,
and marvel at her
mummified magnificence.

BENEATH THE PINES

I lie awake in frozen silence
married to the ground

tented in thin nylon
that enclosed us from the whispering trees.

Your snore howled in unison with the wind.
Leaves like corpses across the thicket

lost in that lonely layer
even the dirt breathes sorrow.

Footsteps break their brittle bones
making my heart pound,

a drum that no one can hear.

Those who’ve passed before wander
at three a.m. in search of nonexistence.

My lips sewn shut
as a figure pulls at my arm

slides me slowly across—
like a zipper.

Angela Valdes is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas. She has also been published on The Original Van Gogh’s Ear Anthology under her maiden name (Angela Cain) with a poem titled “Judgment Day.” Her work has also been published in The MUSED BellaOnline Literary Review with a non-fiction story titled “Absence of Her Jingling Bell.”

She enjoys spending time at home with her husband and two dogs, Shadow and Corbin. To draw inspiration in her writing, she enjoys using realist situations as well as observances from the world around her to spin her work into something emotional and meaningful.