Susana H. Case

Alone, I go to Sounion
for one last Greek ruin on the mainland,
Poseidon looking west. One more day
scratched on the cell wall of my mind,
like Byron carving his name on a column’s base.

My tiny, locked window of time,
how it slows on the promontory,
and, after the ferry, in back streets of an island
with whitewash and fish.

With chicken and with women,
you use your hands, they say here.
Ironic that I could be told such a joke,
with my history
inscribed in my red-rimmed eyes.

I try the path up to a white and shining
monastery, but take a wrong turn
near the top, and reach only a fence,
behind it, a large barking dog,
as if I’ve been led to ponder what it means—
that view I can’t see, that breath I can’t catch.

About the Author

Susana H. Case is the author of seven books of poetry. Dead Shark on the N Train is due out in 2020 from Broadstone Books. Drugstore Blue (Five Oaks Press) won an IPPY Award in 2019. She is also the author of five chapbooks, two of which won poetry prizes, and most recently, Body Falling, Sunday Morning, from Milk and Cake Press. Her first collection, The Scottish Café, from Slapering Hol Press, was re-released in a dual-language English-Polish version, Kawiarnia Szkocka by Opole University Press. Her work has appeared in Calyx, The Cortland Review, Portland Review, Potomac Review, Rattle, RHINO and many other journals. Case is a Professor and Program Coordinator at the New York Institute of Technology in New York City.