In an empty Tuscan mental hospital,you watch
Marina Abramović dance
the mambo.
May your eyes not be sewn
shut with wire.
The last year of the marriage,
your husband spirals into love
with your neighbor,
her seeing-eye dog, a giant schnauzer.
He brings his lover apples to palpate,
a plate of sliced sheep cheese.
Curled up under her fractal art quilt
with the dog, he eats, he confesses.
He’s Marina Abramović
on a cross,
covered by thirty pounds
of open appetite, of sheep’s eyes.
Susana H. Case, a professor at the New York Institute of Technology, has recent work in many journals, including Hawai’i Pacific Review, Portland Review, Potomac Review and Saranac Review. She is the author of the chapbooks The Scottish Café (Slapering Hol Press), Anthropologist in Ohio (Main Street Rag Publishing Company), The Cost of Heat (Pecan Grove Press), and Manual of Practical Sexual Advice (Kattywompus Press). An English-Polish reprint of The Scottish Café, Kawiarnia Szkocka, was published by Opole University Press in Poland. Her book, Salem in Séance (WordTech Editions) released in January 2013. Elvis Presley’s Hips & Mick Jagger’s Lips was recently published by Anaphora Literary Press. Please visit her online, here.