The Waste of Loss

In the apartment across,
she used to sit outside, holding
hands with a thin, brown-haired man 
who eventually shriveled into himself. 
We both watched de-corporation
down to pain and bone,
a ravel of cloth.
                       She chooses
this morning’s sun to smoke, to look
out at the East River’s indigo-stained density. 
I don’t want to see what she sees
in the water, no doubt
feeling like a part of her is drowning.
Remembering
plains of warm body underneath
the sheets.  To always want it different--
I know she wants the way it was.




Susana H. Case, 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) will be released in early 2013. Elvis Presley’s Hips & Mick Jagger’s Lips is forthcoming from Anaphora Literary Press. Please visit her online at: http://iris.nyit.edu/~shcase/.