by Suzanne Marie Hopcroft

When you hit the tar and oil
fumes float visible in
waves don't stop to flirt with
billboard cabs but wheel it
'chita to where the
ferry hums and you'll ride
sun-whipped above decks of
sardines afraid of a
little splash? you'll squeal
then end uniquely drenched in
surf-salt having reached
this isle off an isle that
lands punches over punches
on the head and shoulders
of San Juan (and yes
you're welcome)

by Suzanne Marie Hopcroft

Waits wants only a little
sad she is watching under
plate glass the ruffles and
pant creases that saunter
past flâneur comfort all
anonymous of course none
is what/whom she has been
waiting wanting watching
for there so beneath the eyes
of the city's nine basilicas
all of which she ought to be
praying to statues inside of
because he is not coming or
else not in the way that she
wants she instead flirts with
faces whose main defining
characteristics are a mustache
the reflection within its mass
of bristles of a flower stalk
tucked hastily out a button-
hole and the sort of monocle
cheaply manufactured in the
North that screams I am not
an American gentleman not
to mention the way this little
flower is dangling her own
breathing in and out over the
precipice while fate watches
from a corner of the piazza so
much enjoying visualizing the
push the rapid descent from
ruins old gladiator haunts to
blackout fever more precisely
then death this is what waits
round those coliseum corners
and all because the boy who
bears winter won't be suffered
to mill a few daisies now really?

by Suzanne Marie Hopcroft

So decorum et dulce goes our
fondest song and truly the
fit is sweet where all
notes bullet the heart in major
not physically shattering
anything
just punching a
few spare inches through
and out the soul's gut then
feeding them back
into you with a new
shape the one that makes
you holler at dreadlocked
deadlocked dove eyes above
their war-red-painted pacific signs


But in fall when the circus
march takes a turn for
ballad once Billy who
after all is just a
pup becomes
a was and commences
pacing up and down your
alley nights where
you see him leap at you
through the crisp
atmosphere in pieces
parts and sand well that's when
the lock moves at the touch
of minor metal and and and and

— repeat —

Suzanne Marie Hopcroft is a PhD student in Comparative Literature who writes from New York City. Her fiction has appeared in journals including LITnIMAGE, > kill author, Corium Magazine, and elimae, and as a new poet, she has verse forthcoming in Pure Francis, Pemmican, Caper Literary Journal, and Snow Monkey, among others. Suzanne also teaches developmental reading at a community college in the Bronx and has written fiction reviews for magazines such as World Literature Today and The Literary Review.