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Mario Susko |
Mario Susko, a witness and survivor of the war in Bosnia, teaches now at NCC on Long Island, NY. His poems have appeared in several British journals, The Interpreter's House, Magma, The Ugly Tree, erbacce and Dream Catcher. His poem Conversation was short-listed for the 2004 Forward Poetry Prize. He is an internationally known and awarded author, having published 69 books, 23 of which are books of poems. His fourth book in English, "Eternity on Hold," was released by Turtle Point Press in May 2005.
Forward Regression
if the mind could free itself
from the past and memory survive
its future I'd circumvent my fate
staggering back toward the wall
whether there or just imagined
the last defense against the gravity
the will fights with mindlessly
and everything once uttered turning
to nothing heard the open wound
odorless and glossy the blood dammed
in the brain that knows the motion
but has been disconnected from it
crystal eyes staring at a shaft of light
that pierces the undulant curtain to have
a child's face appear mouthing fish-like
I am you I am you can't you remember
me as I float soundlessly toward myself
a body the sea raises to the surface
Making Sense
what would happen with eternity,
at least our sense of the beginning
and the end without beginning or end,
if suddenly time were to lose its space,
we would all become disoriented, knowing
that we are mortal but now quite unable
to measure our indubious mortality.
we wouldn't be able to comprehend, she
chimes in, whether remembering the past
is already remembering the future,
whether you died in this war or the one
that is yet to happen, and that would be
the whole story, right? she asks, and I
have no answer. neither exact nor elusive.
but if you did, she goes on, died, I mean,
and are dying now again in this vast land
full of cheap gold and silver-plated riches,
in which drugs look like peppermint candy
you used to place under your tongue
to have fresh breath, that's fine, for you
know how it is, to be dying again, I think.
all this would make sense if I found
out whether my soul had slept when I
had, and if she could there's nothing
to remember, or, she interrupts, if I
knew you were you, and not someone
else's memory--see how I break the line
thought just like you (do?)--mine,
for instance, so I could discern, whenever
I want to, that you are mortally eternal,
in space but not in time, or the other way
round, if there is the other way around
the former and the latter, as is around you.
Blind Corners
is this what one is left with -
a body in a ditch along the road,
covered with mud and debris, one arm
shooting up from the elbow, bent
in the wrist, its fist open, fingers
like frozen petals beseeching the sun:
a fleeting image, passing it by,
your mind forces itself to think of
only as a piece of wood, just as it
had to convince itself the hand
pulling the trigger in the building
across the street was not the one
that once, at the wedding dance,
had rested joyfully on your shoulder -
one pictures to himself the believable,
playing one eye against the other
to curve the angle of tolerance:
and that, you hope, saves you, to live
with a self-deceiving ratiocination,
as if there were no things closer
than they appeared, no blind corners
of sanity in the wing mirror of memory -
Freedom Chalk Eraser
there's a blackboard in my memory
covered with scribbled messages they come
to check and see how much I remember
of what I am not supposed to remember
the key explodes full-circle, raids
the mind, and i walk once again
down the long corridor, feeling the wall
with my fingertips, my eyes tightly shut,
my naked body twitching under the gown,
my bare feet, though I ties my shoe-laces
every morning, like paired suckers
on the slime-coated linoleum floor
at the end I touch the brass door knob
but do not step out, for I know they watch
me, in fact wait for me to do that, cross
the border, giving them an excuse to shoot
they, however, say it's for my own good
that the door's locked, or I'd have to face
those whose life I saved who now condemn me
for having done so, as do those whose I did not,
and they argue my claim that my guilt
is guiltlessness is the reason I'm here
back in the room, with the last breath
of light gone, I slip behind the blackboard
and enter a shadowless garden to meet
my dead mother, her head peering faceless
from behind a tree, They say the war made
You lose your mind, she whispers and throws
me a piece of chalk and a dusty eraser,
If so, I tell her, then I am free to be crazy.