by Susana H. Case
That day you accidentally locked us out
of our rental car on some road leaving
the Yucatan—Freud would have said it was
a subconscious result of your dislike
of travel—a car pulled up with three
local men who had better skills than ours;
less than two minutes and they got a door open,
shook their heads at the cash you offered,
waved goodbye, and drove off in a noisy car
billowing black smoke. That night,
in Chetumal, I had the best meal
ever, chivitas—river snails—on a patio
overlooking the bay. You pushed your food around,
sulking for not knowing how to break
into a car. From this, I knew we had no future.
Susana H. Case is the award-winning author of nine books of poetry, most recently, If This Isn’t Love (Broadstone Books) and co-editor with Margo Taft Stever of I Wanna Be Loved by You: Poems on Marilyn Monroe (Milk & Cake Press). The first of her five chapbooks, The Scottish Café (Slapering Hol Press) was re-released in an English-Polish version, Kawiarnia Szkocka by Opole University Press and as an English-Ukrainian edition, Шотландська Кав’ярня by Slapering Hol Press. https://www.susanahcase.com.
Hawaii Pacific Review 