by Susana H. Case
Boy crazy, the doctor tsked—
the phrase
lodged in my mother’s throat,
as she made sure she heard,
repeating it correctly.
She was easily fooled
by the right diplomas.
He prescribed black and aqua
pills. I lost time in there;
days ballooned away from me.
Life is a candy stand
with a thirty-year lease,
if you’re a pretty girl in America.
He broke the lease.
Maybe he said bats in the belfry
and we heard him wrong.
One diagnosis was as good
as the other.
My mother lost
most of her hearing
and, ashamed, tried to hide it.
Instead of deaf, people thought
she was crazy.
Why not her daughter too?
Answers didn’t match
questions, her sentences
were strings of beads, looped
over the heads of those
who mocked her. Meanwhile,
I was too drowsy to notice.

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). Case is co-host of West-East Poets.
Website: http://www.susanahcase.com/.