.
& Peacocks in Trees
.
& fog at night lingering
& a black bear with rope
strung through his snout
.
& a boy pulling it
who offers to pose for photos
& what first seems
.
to be furniture in a chai shop
but is a man
in rags asleep upright
.
& a radio that plays only static
& everyone coughing coughing
& a tourist who brags in broken
.
English of the fifty grams
of dope he smokes each day
& a night watchman
.
who takes a bribe to unlock
a tower with a marble casket
& the Taj Mahal in moonlight
.
before the workers shout
to open the massive doors
& the ghosts of suicides
.
who jumped from the stairs
near the gateway
& the beggar who offers
.
to leap into a well for rupees
who when I say no looks down
in disappointment
.
SUSANA H. CASE is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Dead Shark on the N Train 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. 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. Poems by Case have appeared in Calyx, Catamaran, 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.
North of Oxford 