November 29, 2015

Susana H. Case

LEVEL 4: BRUSSELS

The metro and the underground streetcars
are shut down, every station, the soccer
match cancelled, Johnny Hallyday’s songs
rescheduled for spring, because who can get there.
The authorities advise: shelter in place, and
the market held on Sundays is not this Sunday, brick
and mortar stores locked. A man in a big jacket
walks around the city with a bomb
beneath the cloth. Even he is anxious, or, maybe
he’s a ghost now. No one knows.
Three tourists photograph themselves
at the Grand Place, in front of soldiers, next to
a Christmas tree, because what else can tourists do,
but wend their way to a few bars that are defiantly
still open.
Each big jacket is a suspicion.
It’s November, the first snow flurrying; anyone out
is wearing a big jacket. Who will wrap the pretty gifts
piled into holiday displays? Who will eat the food
spoiling in the shut-tight bistros? Manneken Pis,
little bronze man, still pees in the fountain’s basin,
oblivious.
Maybe he’ll save the city again.
He can dress as the mayor in a fur-trimmed cloak.
Streets are sealed behind the Hôtel de Ville.
Hardly anyone is there to point and laugh at him.

Poets Respond
November 29, 2015

[download audio]

__________

Susana H. Case: “This poem is a response to the virtual lock-down of Brussels as a response to intelligence suggesting an imminent (level 4) threat. It recalls the myths about the main symbol of Brussels, the little statue called Manneken Pis, who has saved the city before, some say, by peeing on fire and who is often dressed in fanciful costumes.” (website)

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July 21, 2015

Susana H. Case

HOLD ME LIKE YOU’LL NEVER LET ME GO

In the street, I find an acoustic guitar,
no name on it, so I decide it’s mine and
learn some chords from
a pretty boy ten years younger
whom I retrieve from a SoHo party.

He plays in a garage band. He likes
my long, ironed-straight hair, how I
remove my clothes, their erratic cuts,
easy to toss onto a chair. For a week
we don’t leave the apartment.

He makes no plans to go home, but home
is Sweden, so that’s understandable.
I strum and roam through rooms,
feeling like a folk goddess.
I’m leavin’ on a jet plane, I sing.

You ever spend a whole week naked, talking
about nothing but folk rock? But then 
we run out of food and being with him begins
to seem like shoplifting. You ever do that,
take what you want just to see how it feels?

from Rattle #48, Summer 2015
Tribute to New Yorkers

__________

Susana H. Case: “I am one of the few people I know in NYC who was born here and when I consider all the possibilities, how lucky was that? I found an academic job and stayed. My most recent book is 4 Rms w Vu, and yes, New Yorkers are obsessed with their apartments (sometimes houses): finding them, keeping them, coping with their neighbors, landlords, etc. It’s hard to know how I’d be writing if I hadn’t grown up here and remained, or even if I’d be writing, but without sidewalks as my encyclopedia, my words would probably have less of an edge. I’d probably sound nicer. I might even be nicer, but I don’t really believe that. I know I wouldn’t have written ‘Hold Me Like You’ll Never Let Me Go.’”

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