A Wish Does Not Grow Straight
At my age every wish seems larger than life,
like a giant wishbone made of wood or stone
that cannot be severed or altered by hand.
What does it sound like when wood speaks?
Run to the fire & put out the overwhelm.
I allow the wild elm to smolder & sway,
teach me more about desire’s wild ribbons
than my tidy garden with its rows of hedges.
What is the sound of ribbons unleashed?
Memory is simply smoke, fire underground.
My red dress swirls around me in a train
of miracles, carpeted silence pierced
by night birds, footsteps & running water.
What does my red dress say to the darkness?
The rawness of winter will not swallow me.
……
This poem is from the The Donna Wolf-Palacio Poetry Prize winning book In the Needle, A Woman by Susan Michele Coronel (Finishing Line Press), and can be found at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/in-the-needle-a-woman-by-susan-michele-coronel/
Susan Michele Coronel lives in New York City. A two-time Pushcart nominee, she has had poems published in numerous journals including MOM Egg Review, Redivider, One Art, Anti-Heroin Chic, TAB Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Spillway 29, and Plainsongs. This book, her first full-length collection, was the winner of the 2024 Donna Wolf Palacio Poetry Prize. In 2023, she won the Massachusetts Poetry Festival’s First Poem Award. Versions of this book were named finalists for Harbor Editions’ Laureate Prize (2021), the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award (2023), the C&R Press Poetry Award (2023), and the Louise Bogan Award (2024). In 2021 she received a Parent Poet Fellowship for Martha’s Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing’s summer conference. Ms. Coronel holds an M.S. Ed. in Applied Linguistics from the City University of New York (Queens College) and a B.A. in English from Indiana-University Bloomington.
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