Susanna Lang

Between Here and Somewhere Else

PUBLISHED IN FOLIO 2026: VOL. 41.

Khadijah, Hafsa, Maryam

They don’t need words for this carnival ride
high above a pier that was once a wartime base

for sailors—these three sisters who fled
the war in their own country, far from Chicago

where girls can swing up high, their bright scarves
floating behind them, mirrors like miniature suns

on their skirts and the lake wind wrapping
its arms around them for the brief time of their flight.

Familia Rodriguez
The bus arrived late
from Texas

A family was sent late
to the police station

They had been promised shelter
They had been told there would be work

mother and father
ages not listed
four children
17
10
5
3 (still in diapers)
last name Rodriguez

The lieutenant said it was late
the station was full

wouldn’t let them in

Modes of Transportation

From Venezuela it is 2686 miles to Chicago.
They walked, mostly.
At the end, they swam.
Sometimes a governor who did not want them
made a bus available.

It is 6965 miles from Afghanistan to Chicago.
The government made a plane available.
There were days of waiting outside the airport, not knowing
if they would be allowed to board.
Not knowing when the shooting would start.

Juan

At the church
we pack blankets, sleeping bags, pillows, boxes of store-bought cookies
for new arrivals at the police station.

A little boy
tucks a bag of cornflakes in with the bedding. His family sleeps at the church
and he eats cornflakes in the morning.

But at the station there is no milk for a child’s cereal.

What the Sisters Told Me

Before the plane, they drove to Kabul
on the Jalalabad road—sheer rock cliffs, waterfalls

crashing to the gorge below, narrow
lanes, sharp turns. Only the overloaded trucks slow down.

Hafsa says she was scared, a little.
Not her sisters, they are never afraid, not even

here, in a new place. But Maryam
misses her old school: it was beautiful, she tells me,

because she was in it. Maryam
in her bright orange dress and pants, her orange scarf, her laughter.

Monster

Juan roars like a monster, runs at me with his fingers
curved into claws. I have forgotten
how to say monster in Spanish. I have forgotten

how all little boys act out the same stories,
no matter what language
they dream in, what names they give to their beasts.

From There to Here

In Afghanistan, women recite
landays, two unbalanced lines, each one honed to an edge.

The afternoon of the rides
the girls’ lines shortened, silver knives for butter.

Not Yet Home

At the corner of Irving Park and California
a woman holds a sign: We are migrants,
please help. One child in a stroller,
another sitting on the bench with a coloring book.

Migrants, meaning: people in movement.
Meaning: not an invading army.

More like the swallows
already gathering on the fence lines.
Unsettled.

𐫱𐫱𐫱

Susanna Lang divides her time between Chicago and Uzès (France). Her fourth full-length collection of poems, This Spangled Dark, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press, and her translation of My Forests by Hélène Dorion is forthcoming from Book*Hug Press. Her translation of Souad Labbize’s poems, Unbutton the silk of your silence, was released by Éditions des Lisières (2025). Her work has appeared in such publications as The Common, The Slowdown, Mayday, Rhino Reviews, Crab Orchard Review and The MacGuffin.