Return from the River Styx

Abstract

Return from the River Styx Susanna Lang (bio) My father leaves, he comes back. He speaks of having been on a boat; the ferryman must have bitten his coin, found it not good. Another time he was on a plane, needed a ticket he could not find. In the evening he left again, wandering on his own while I flew from one city, jeweled against the dark, to another that rose up shining as brightly out of the night. He did not know I was coming. He admits that he does not know what he does not have. He’d just as soon die as live—he’s sure of that though of nothing else. But he thinks he flew over the city, the prophet Amos by his side singing justicewill roll down; and in the distance the coast of America. [End Page 88] Susanna Lang Susanna Lang’s books include Tracing the Lines (Brick Road Poetry Press), Even Now (The Backwaters Press), and Two by Two, a chapbook (Finishing Line Press). A two-time Hambidge fellow and a recipient of the Emerging Writers Fellowship from the Bethesda Writer’s Center, she has published original poems and translations from the French in such journals as Little Star, New Letters, december, Blue Lyra Review, Prime Number Magazine and Poetry East. Book publications include translations of Words in Stone and The Origin of Language, both by Yves Bonnefoy. She lives in Chicago, where she teaches in the Chicago Public Schools. Copyright © 2016 University of Nebraska Press