Landslide, by Susan Michele Coronel

Day and Night, by Max Ernst (Germany) c. 1942

​Landslide
 
I’d beg someone to loosen the straps
on my floral dress
if it would help the earth breathe.
With creases and compartments
we are confused, in denial.
 
Scaffolding. A church
of rock breaks apart too fast.
Still trapped in amber.
 
The Huascaran avalanche in Peru
left 18,000 lives
under debris and mudflow.
An earthquake’s white wrath.
 
I am scrubbing my knees with salt.
I am remembering the far side
of a mountain before faces are erased.

Susan Michele Coronel

Susan Michele Coronel's first manuscript, In the Needle, A Woman, won the 2024 Donna Wolf Palacio Poetry Prize, and is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press this summer. She has had poems published in numerous journals including Mom Egg Review, One Art, Minyan, and Spillway 29. She lives in New York City, where she has owned and directed a daycare business for over fifteen years.