Susan Michele Coronel

​The Four Seasons According to My American-Born Grandmother

Winter

When I remove my clothes by the radiator before stepping into the bath, I’m white paint, a siren of clay. The world is too busy to notice my shape. My father works all day and night in the upholstery shop. My mother, a warm sponge, gives us sustenance, tongue, taste. We never have a conversation, only pass through the house like slips of paper scraping the walls. I'm wrap myself in a slate blue towel when a crow lands on the fire escape, caws and caws until I’m dry, but I have no idea what he wants to say.

Spring

Blooms and doves populate the oak tree outside my window. Simcha, the neighborhood cat, swipes his tail, watching from the stoop, always alert, always waiting. I wonder what I’ll do when I grow up – become a stenographer, watch the willow brush the side of a building, find a husband. Only a few paths are open to me, a girl not yet broken, but I’d rather lie on the beach at Coney Island and watch the sky turn apple pink. There’s little time left until I merge into another being I do not recognize.

Summer

I am the defanged bride. He’s my second cousin from the old country. When we meet, I bite my lower lip every time I try to speak. I have no choice but to agree to this union, bondage sweet with rind. As a child he lived near a forest, pine trees bowing in the breeze. Occasionally a fox or badger would leave claw marks on the dirt path outside his village. When the claws grew and were possessed by humans, his mother decided it was time to leave. He keeps his trauma inside him like a black seed that you sprinkle on rye bread. It appears ever so often like a wink, then burrows back to its hiding place underground.

Fall

Colourful leaves are the most striking things to witness on my block. I count how many are mahogany, amber, violet. When I type letters, they are like little mouths dancing in straight lines. I never learned the Hebrew alphabet, but when I hear my parents speak Yiddish with my grandparents, I understand everything. Where there’s Yiddish in the air I can exist, even when I don’t know what to say. After I marry, my sister-in-law moves in with us, but she’s half blind and clumsy, and always gets to use the bathroom first. Things never fall apart all at once. Soon, I will tell her to leave. Soon, the soles of my feet will be chapped. My babies will arrive and I will bathe them in the dark.
 
**
 
Omen 
 
My Ukrainian grandmother used to say that if you see a nun walking alone, it’s bad luck, but if you see a pair of sisters, good news is coming. One morning on the elevator on the way up to our 29th-floor apartment, she saw a lone nun. As soon as she arrived, the birds spoke to her, winged omens whipping outside our kitchen window. The sky hollowed to cobalt. The flock circled and circled.
 
When something was wrong, she felt it in her bones – like the weather and the salt of the sea rising into the crevices of her doubts. Immediately she announced that something had happened to my step-grandfather Jack, who was at their apartment a few blocks away. With furrowed brow, she pursed her salmon lips at the sky, tangling her hands in the fat alabaster beads around her neck. When Jack didn’t answer the phone, the lilies on the kitchen wallpaper shuddered and she dropped the receiver. The long yellow cord dangled and twisted. Danger in this dangling, this curlicued concern. It fell like a stone on the linoleum floor and she howled like a sinking ship. 
 
Pointing toward home, she grabbed her large patent-leather pocketbook and fled into the wind. When she called to confirm that Jack had collapsed and died of sudden cardiac arrest, we stepped away from the shadows on the walls and dipped our bread into large bowls of milk. We waited for her to return wearing a baby-powdered dress and styled blonde wig, chunky jewelry with a side of prophecy. We knew she’d be back soon. We sang to the sky. We sang to the birds who told us things we already knew.
 
**
 
Loss Swept In
 
To find an escape route and rectify wrongs, the dolls swallowed tiny pink pills and binge watched Bridgerton, then dusted tables and chairs as if to bless them. They unlatched windows and doors, waiting for a breeze to arrive through low-hanging willows. A breeze never came,  but Loss swept in like a Bichon puppy seeking a chew toy. After releasing the hems of their pants, the dolls proceeded to wrap themselves in aluminum foil, then promptly escorted Loss to the sunroom, where Mother served sponge cake and cherry tea. They proceeded into the garage, where Father demonstrated power tools. The dolls excelled at their waltz lessons, but only when spinning counterclockwise. 
 
Welcoming Loss meant the dolls no longer had to rage or flee. They shared their beds, books, and pantry. They topped Loss’ head with a porridge bowl, rubbing in the grains to exfoliate.  The heft of their bodies sank into the floorboards, and they chased their fears for hours until they placed them on the clothesline to sway, recast as undershirts and ruffled skirts. The dolls spent  a night in the garden of hydrangeas and roses, but when thorns began to sprout from their ears, they extracted them and fled. Over time, Loss became more tolerable. The dolls agreed to co-occupy space with Loss for as long as they could draw breath. 
 
**

A Tale of Girlhood

One day Girl wakes to find she has hooded eyes and rotten teeth, her skin covered in scales and feathers. She knows she can’t live under her mother’s roof, so she runs away.
 
She enters nightclubs to search for those who can heal her, even though she knows she’s really seeking herself. She grabs the arm of a tall man with pale flesh and green spiky hair. After he forces his tongue down her throat, she flees, crashing into a woman with long blonde hair and black fishnets sitting on a velvet couch. She begs the woman to capture him. The woman removes her stockings and wraps them around the tall man’s  neck until he can’t breathe.
 
Next to the bathroom, Girl finds a black painted door and walks through it, entering a forest.  She finds her mother there. Chicken blood stains the leaves. Girl loves the smell of soil. Her tongue flaps, licking the blackness from her mother’s heart, trapped like a tethered deer, and spits it back to the ground. She tells her mother Fairytales lied while you rocked me  in your lap. For her entire life she was ashamed to look in mirrors, flashed eyes sideways  while on camera. She wore a pink wig so she could glow more than her mother, make herself known, not become a disappearing swirl down a gray drain.
 
Girl’s skin thirsts for rainwater. For miles she carries a stack of plastic cups and small water jug, until she finds a raft in the wavering dark. She sails along the Hudson, where she becomes a sly leviathan ripping false eyelashes and lips from her face as the river carries her downstream.
 
When Girl reaches shore, she finally comprehends that she is not dirty, ugly, or mean.  She feels pleasure when she shakes the trunk of a plum tree with her thumbs. Without opening her mouth, she holds a piece fruit in her hand and is full, fed and nourished.  She squeezes it until the skin breaks and the juice dribbles down her fingers.
 
**

Birthday


In the days leading up to September, light hurls itself against the body’s cracks. It can’t enter directly, so looks for tiny breaks in skin. Hydrants are sealed off from loose strands of hair. No exit for swirling water. A field mouse tunnels deeper into its burrow as the forest floor hardens. Nights are becoming shorter, wintering for the coming chill. The edges of leaves turn purple and curl before shattering like confetti. My sagging face can’t reverse time. The months creep faster, like spiders or rips in pantyhose. Summer means all the light your mouth can hold. My birthday month means I will disappear.

**
 
Blue Village

When the enormous fish arrived, we knew it was only a matter of time before we'd live underwater, when the blue cave where our homes were nestled would become ocean. The gigantic fish were white and faceless like airplanes, but we didn't question their presence. Our parents and teachers had forever prepared us for their arrival from as soon as we could understand language. Their presence was foretold in our bedtime stories, our folklore, our TV shows. As water started trickling through the ravine, the Italian cypresses transformed into a deep cobalt like the centre of an apple after you chew through its centre.

Weeks before their arrival, we coated our homes in assorted colours, to waterproof them before our bodies grew scales, before our lungs shrank to make room for gills. A fleet of sailboats arrived, to transport those who chose to leave for good. I knew I'd remain, long after the white water blasted through the rocks, long after the cranberry, yellow, and lime-green homes were blurred like a spirograph. I learned to taste the umbrella of my body, to smell food and death with a tail. I grew accustomed to swim forever. 

**
 
Older Daughter as Persephone

I. How Persephone Leaves
 
Persephone says she loves both parents and cannot choose one over the other. But Hades says, Choose me because I’m your father and you know who loves you more.

Hades says Persephone’s lips are like milk chocolate and that she’s a gorgeous sugarplum, his one true love.

Persephone tells Demeter: I just want to spend more time with my father. What’s wrong with that? First it’s once a week, then half a week, then every week, then a spray of gold dust on the windowpane. 

As Persephone picks narcissus flowers by the plaza, Hades absconds with her in his black SUV. There’s no struggle. He plasters white copy paper all over his vehicle with her name and I love yous written in red permanent marker.

The gap in the earth closes after them. Persephone resides in a tunnel under Rockefeller Center. Demeter hardly sees Persephone, maybe an occasional weekend, on Christmas, or her birthday.

II. Hades’ Magic
 
Hades’ alter ego is Hector, who sings in a mariachi band called Quien Me Gusta La Mejor. His microphone is the wrinkled plum of midnight.

Hades wanted to be a priest, but because he loved women too much, he fled the seminary. 

Hades enlists Persephone to cook enchiladas de carne, horchata and eggs over easy.

Hades teaches Persephone how to clean toilets and make windows sparkle like dragonfly wings.

Hades confides in Persephone that his second wife was a witch, only good in the bedroom.

Hades’ second wife becomes a bird and lives in a treehouse in Texas.

III.  The Separation of Demeter and Persephone

When Persephone was in kindergarten, she made drawings for Demeter and wrote I love you so much fifty times. Sometimes she scrawled so many sos, they climbed off the page.

Now when Persephone texts Demeter, she says she loves her as a mother, because she gave birth to her, but that her influence is not part of her identity. When Persephone gets angry, she tells Demeter she is a toxic parent and that she has a special relationship with Hades, that he’s made her the person she is today.

When a judge asks Persephone where she would like to live, she chooses the obvious answer. The judge says it’s not such a bad thing if Persephone pledges her loyalty to Hades and becomes Queen of the Dead. 

Sometimes Persephone misses her mother and siblings. Hades says she can visit them anytime, but before he lets her leave, he layers pomegranate seeds over vanilla ice cream, presents the dessert to her in a scalloped dish, garnished with a purple orchid.

An anguished Demeter visits Zeus and Hera. She threatens to speed up global warming, lay waste to the crops of North America. 

Zeus and Hera resolve the matter by ruling that Persephone can spend more time with Demeter in the warmer months, when roses and lilac quiver on their stems, when the sun burns the meadow grasses where meadowlarks roam.

The rest of the year she will remain under Hades’ spell.

IV. Demeter’s Forgotten Daughter
 
Not many know about Selena, Persephone’s sister, whose name means moon. How many moons has Selena not seen Persephone? She yearns to inhale her perfume, emulate her by taking selfies, wearing crop tops and short shorts from Aeropostale.
 
Persephone constantly calls and video chats with Selena. She tells her that she cannot live without her and that she’s her queen, her love, her cream puff. Persephone and Hades shower her with wet kisses, extravagant gifts, and sometimes speak disparagingly of Demeter.

One day Selena becomes a young woman and tells Demeter: I want to live with Persephone and Hades. Mother, you’ll never compete with the king and queen of the underworld.

Demeter shrieks, douses her breasts with salt. Demeter wants sleep to dampen the pain Hades has caused, the sensation of ripping off her ears and casting them into the sea.

Demeter’s tears water the sheaves of wheat and barley that she cradles in her arms. She lays them on the ground next to her basket, which brims with bright orange and magenta poppies. She inhales their fragrance until sunrise casts light over the fallow fields.

**
 
Susan Michele Coronel lives in New York City. Her first full-length collection, In the Needle, A Woman, won the 2024 Donna Wolf Palacio Poetry Prize, and is forthcoming Finishing Line Press. A two-time Pushcart nominee, she has had poems published in numerous journals including MOM Egg Review, Spillway 29, Funicular, Redivider, and One Art. In 2023, she won the Massachusetts Poetry Festival’s First Poem Award. Versions of her 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).