Ignite your slim cigarette with your red lighter on the terrazza of your room in Bologna because you are too young to think about death or your arteries— not yet aware of how smoking yellows your teeth, and you want to be cool, hot, sexy, anything but an American, to be like the two Italian women you see on the street who are dressed for a party, easy in sparkly heels on cobblestones, and you don’t know those tricks yet, watch carefully, plan to go down alone, practice once it gets dark.
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Susana H. Case is the author of nine books of poetry, most recently, If This Isn't Love, Broadstone Books (2023), and co-editor with Margo Taft Stever of I Wanna Be Loved by You: Poems on Marilyn Monroe, Milk & Cake Press (2022), Honorable Mention for the Eric Hoffer Book Award as well as Finalist for several awards. She won the Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition in 2002 for The Scottish Café, which was re-released in English/Polish as Kawiarnia Szkocka (Opole University Press, 2010) and in English/Ukrainian as Шотландська Кав'ярня (Slapering Hol Press, 2024). See more at:https://susanahcase.com.
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