Susanna Lang

Au Marché

Uzès

The smell of roasted chestnuts—New York City,
I am eight years old.

My brother takes the subway to his junior high.
I am the only child

still holding my mother’s hand when we leave our building
on West End Avenue.

The park if we turn right, the subway
if we turn left

and then the city, immense, an entire country.
My mother buys me a bag of chestnuts,

warm in my hands. This is her city,
nothing worries her

or if it does, she doesn’t let me see.
Not yet. Not for a long time.

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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. 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. More information available at www.susannalang.com.