Susanna Lang
Cityscapes with a Train Crossing
and an Apple Tree
Mozart Street, Chicago
A woman stands beneath the apple tree in her garden, hair pulled back
in a graying bun, long-handled picker in her hands. Considers
which apples might be ready to pluck—blush of pink, no worm holes.
Half a block north, the crossing gates drop into place and a train
pulls away from the station, heading downtown where trees
were planted as decoration, no bruised fruit on the pavement.
If she hears the warning bell or the rumble of wheels on the rails,
it is only to remember taking the tram in a seaside city she visited once
where orange trees lined the streets, heavy with fruit for the taking.
Here in her own city, apples fill the bucket and her mouth puckers
as she imagines the tart flesh. She has had enough summers,
already knows there will be a last apple, a last day. She will find
more tomorrow, but maybe not through the end of next week. Then
a last pie, sparkling with sugar. One day she will not hear the train at all.
Cityscape with Artists, a Serpent Mound and a Nymph
Horner Park, Chicago
The earth rose in coils beneath the men’s feet, dirt become serpent,
become memory. They laid protective burlap
over the nodding onion and buffalo grass they seeded
before the storm brought rain
to nourish what they’d made—the birds can always go by the river,
feed on sunflowers and echinacea.
Now that the storm has blown itself north, a full-grown tree
lies across the path, its leaves still lush,
sidewalks strewn with the bits and pieces of what has held to limbs
until now. Following the storm’s path
I see the water nymph in the garden of the green stucco house
has a new hat: she needs it
since sun has chased the rain. She stands unmoving
in the archway
and nothing fills the pitcher she holds with endless hope
over a scalloped shell.
The serpent will still dream of waking.
Cityscape with Trumpets, Sparrows and Apricots
HarvesTime Foods, Lawrence Avenue, Chicago
Start in the grocery store parking lot where trucks had deposited
appliance-sized boxes, watermelons grown in Indiana and Illinois,
Michigan cherries and everbearing strawberries, hoisted on forklifts
to unseen hands that would unpack the heavy fruit and lay it on ice
so my neighbors and I could guess which ones are ripest.
In another life I might be the produce buyer for a neighborhood
grocery. I imagine visiting the refugee garden down the street
where we would weigh peppers and radishes and choy and tomatoes
in our hands, or I would drive from farm to farm on dusty
downstate roads.
It probably doesn’t work like that.
Since I already have ripe plums in a chilled bowl, the last apricots
of the season ripening in a paper bag, I only buy a cold lemonade
to drink in the park by the train crossing. Here at last are the trumpets,
two of them though only one hits all the notes, and a flock of sparrows
crowding around my feet to beg for treats I didn’t bring. I will never be
St. Francis, birds feeding from my hand, or Demeter bringing forth fruit,
or even the grocery store buyer choosing produce that other Demeters
have nurtured. And these endless scales don’t ever make it to low C
no matter how expressively the horn teacher waves his free hand
or plays the right notes with a few extra graces to show what he means.
He keeps trying of course, and the boy drops closer to C—
next week he might play a real tune, and my apricots may finally be ripe.
Susanna Lang divides her time between Chicago and Uzès, France. The 2024 winner of the Marvin Bell Memorial Poetry Prize from December Magazine, her most recent chapbook, Like This, was released in 2023 (Unsolicited Books), along with her translations of poems by Souad Labbize, My Soul Has No Corners (Diálogos Books). Her third full-length collection of poems, Travel Notes from the River Styx, was published in 2017 by Terrapin Books. In addition to December Magazine, Her poems, translations and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in such publications as The Common, Asymptote, Tupelo Quarterly, American Life in Poetry, Rhino Reviews, Mayday and The Slowdown. Her translations of poetry by Yves Bonnefoy include Words in Stone and The Origin of Language, and she is now working with Souad Labbize and Hélène Dorion on new translations. More information available at www.susannalang.com.