In the Needle, A Woman

“The mandible of time opens & closes,” writes Susan Michele Coronel. “I flash forward to erase/what’s lost.” In her debut full-length collection, In the Needle, a Woman, Coronel stitches together a creature called “time” to examine, not only her own lineage, but the legacy she will pass onto her daughters. Time truly is a creature — hungry and golden — “a copperhead seeking its yellow tail,” and one that is “thirsty for the past.” Retracing her family’s trauma back to the pogroms in Europe, as well as her own childhood of the ‘70s, we are transported to a pre-teen wood paneled “basement, tuning in to radio static that crackled under a dangling bulb . . . coating our tongues bright gold.” Donnie and Marie, Barbies, and Judy Blume’s Are You There, God, It’s Me Margaret? are stitched into this tale with a needle from the heart, and “in the needle, a woman.” The speaker (“this monster”) has withstood the untimely death of her brother, divorce, estrangement from her children, and “listens to Nick Cave and grinds stone with its teeth.” Susan Michele Coronel has written a memoir in verse, a muscular book with “hooves,” a collection that we all need to read.

Compelling and remarkably honest, In the Needle, A Woman investigates both the softer and sharper edges of our unique emotional landscapes in a series of exciting, accessible poems that explore equally the strengths and frailties of the human condition in its varied aspects — personal identity, grief, relationships, family, and slowly mending hearts. Weaving together universal open-hearted narratives into a poignant collection, In the Needle, A Woman is both intellectually stimulating and emotionally engaging, reminding us of the beautiful complexities of being human.

In gorgeous phrasing and rhythm, in the depths of song, and sometimes in the depths of grief, Susan Michele Coronel writes “my mouth opens / a fig of faith in a coppice of eucalyptus & cedar / I am the new eve” and indeed the poems here mark the beginning of what must be lived when the past’s cinders are spread across generations. Here are poems that sift through the grief of lost siblings, strained relationships, and the anxiety and joys of what comes next for the children, to discover what is left of what’s been passed down—the myths and the stories that save us: “Children always refuse, / but it’s still better to ask them to carry something /than to come to the table of the future empty-handed.”

An exploration of the feminine and all its iterations, In the Needle, a Woman encompasses the beauty and divinity found in the evolution from girlhood to teenager to young adult to adult now caring for the elders, while at the same time bearing witness to the mistakes we all make, the flaws we all have, the wishes and regrets all sewn together into the complexity of being human. An important read that reminds one of how essential our relationships with our feminine relatives, ancestors, and selves are to our sense of being and belonging.