Susana H. Case
That’s Not How It Was
The loneliness of not having a hand
to hold while dying did not exist,
and there were plenty of priests.
It was the prayers that were long,
not the military-like line of waxed wooden
coffins for corpses wrapped in plastic,
wheeled out at night, so many, it seemed
like a parade in a march to cremation.
Sure, burials and funerals happened,
as they unceasingly happen, but car horns
blared, those still fiercely alive
embraced in search of comfort, present
and crying. The laughter in town
of those lucky to savor their lives,
floated in the air, while they ate pesce spada,
drank vino alla spina, as did the cheers
over the latest soccer win; crowds
poured through the streets in team colors,
unworried about masking tape
marking the distance to stand apart.
And the church bells rang for each death,
not just once daily for all the deaths.
The coos of Turtle-doves didn’t seem
quite so loud. In Piazza Navonna,
the tourists jostled, posing for photos
in front of La Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi.
And at La Fontana dei Trevi, a drunken
fool was taking an illegal dip. How dirty
ones hands were–with sweat and gelato,
not busy typing #iostoacasa,
I stay at home, and it was easy to forget
to wash, instead walk to the park for a rest
in the sun, where the person on the bench
across did not listen for a cough.
Susana H. Case is the author of the poetry collections Body Falling, Sunday Morning (Milk and Cake Press, 2019); Drugstore Blue (Five Oaks Press, 2019); Erasure, Syria (Recto y Verso Editions, 2018); 4 Rms w Vu (Mayapple Press, 2014); Earth and Below (Anaphora Literary Press, 2013); Salem in Séance (WordTech Communications, 2013); and Elvis Presley’s Hips & Mick Jagger’s Lips (Anaphora Literary Press, 2012). Dead Shark on the N Train is forthcoming in 2020 from Broadstone Books. Case is also the author of the poetry chapbooks Manual of Practical Sexual Advice (Kattywompus Press, 2011), The Cost of Heat (Pecan Grove Press, 2010), Hiking the Desert in High Heels (RightHandPointing, 2005), Anthropologist in Ohio (Main Street Rag, 2005), and The Scottish Café (Slapering Hol Press, 2002). Her poems have 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.
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