Serpari

Hoping to avoid the poisonous ones, 
the serpari gather the serpents,  
feed them eggs and mice. In May, 

they’re scooped from terrariums  
for a procession with a brass band  
that starts at the main piazza and slowly  

moves through the streets. A statue  
of San Domenico di Sora in a jewel- 
encrusted gold frame leads. The likeness 

of di Sora, an abbot who wandered Italy  
in the tenth century to establish monasteries,  
carries the snakes around Cocullo.  

The town has one of his molars  
and a horseshoe from his female mule.  
If the snakes don't fall off,  

or slither down an arm of the statue, 
if the snakes wrap themselves around  
its head, this means good fortune, 

and the people extend hands to touch  
the saint, to face their fears—of disease,  
poverty, and other harms.  

As I do these days, my back against  
a stairway rail or map stand, each  
a bulwark against being pushed,  

staring down at the subway tracks,  
where a three-foot-long serpent 
skitters over a Skittles wrapper. 

On the platform, one more deranged person,  
this time a bearded man wearing a Just Do It!  
t-shirt, screams obscenities at strangers. 

SUSANA H. CASE

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), awarded Honorable Mention for the Eric Hoffer Book Award.