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Kitchen, Donetsk

By Susanna Lang

She had planned to offer peaches with the tea.

August was warm; the fruit had ripened to perfection.

She’d placed two paring knives on the cutting board,
set out the teapot with nasturtiums painted on the side.

Two cups.  A shard from the cup that shattered
nestles inside the bowl of fruit.

And the lace curtain, stained the color of nasturtiums or ripe peaches

 

-- This poem was inspired by a photograph taken by Sergie Ilnitsky. About the photograph: Damaged goods lie in a damaged kitchen in downtown Donetsk, Ukraine, 26 August 2014. Residential areas in several districts of Donetsk, including the central part of the city, suffered from artillery fire, three people [were] killed and 10 wounded, the press centre of Donetsk city Council reported.  Retrieved from Ilnitsky's website.
Added: Friday, August 28, 2015  /  Used with permission.
Susanna Lang

Susanna Lang’s newest collection of poems, Tracing the Lines, was published in 2013 by the Brick Road Poetry Press. Her first collection, Even Now, was published in 2008 by The Backwaters Press, and a chapbook, Two by Two, was released in October 2011 from Finishing Line Press. She has published original poems and essays, and translations from the French, in such journals as Little Star, New Letters, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, The Green Mountains Review, The Baltimore Review, Kalliope, Southern Poetry Review, World Literature Today, Chicago Review, New Directions, and Jubilat. Book publications include translations of Words in Stone and The Origin of Language, both by Yves Bonnefoy. She lives with her husband and son in Chicago, where she teaches in the Chicago Public Schools.

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