by Bonnie Naradzay
Father of Baby Shot Dead by IDF in Hebron: I Stopped When Asked, Then They Opened Fire. 'The soldier was about ten meters away from me. He saw me, he saw my wife and the children. The car windows were not dark, it was daylight and everything was clear. You can't say he didn't see that it was a family,' Fahed Abu Haykal told Haaretz, June 6, 2026.
I’d like to write like Tu Fu, whose poems
are like branches of trees reflected in water –
the branches of trees. Like a group of trees seen
through clouds or mist, they appear, then disappear.
But I learned that today Israeli forces murdered
a Palestinian baby, in the West Bank, in Hebron.
He was in his mother’s arms, in a car the soldiers
shot into. They’d ordered the driver, the baby’s father,
to stop, and he did as they said, and raised his hands
in submission. The baby’s mother sustained shrapnel
injuries near her heart, may not survive. The soldiers
had been standing idly in the street. After firing
into the car, they walked unconcernedly away from
their carnage. Today in Gaza City, Israelis aimed
a drone at the Jawazat camp for people who’d been
displaced. The drone killed seven, wounded 15 others.
How can I honor the lives of Palestinians? Like a group
of olive trees, they are destroyed and made to disappear.
Bonnie Naradzay is the author of Invited to the Feast (Slant Books, 2025). Her poems have appeared in AGNI, The American Journal of Poetry, Birmingham Poetry Review, Cider Press Review, The Georgia Review, Cumberland River Review, Dappled Things, New Letters, Poet Lore, Rhino, Innisfree, and many other journals. While at Harvard University’ graduate program, she was in Robert Lowell’s class on “The King James Bible as English Poetry.” She was a winner of the University of New Orleans Poetry Prize (a month’s stay in the South Tyrol castle of Ezra Pound’s daughter Mary). Three of her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart prize. She is a 2017 graduate of the St John’s College Graduate Institute. She has led poetry classes at the DC Women’s Jail and currently leads weekly poetry sessions at Street Sense and at a retirement community both in Washington, DC.
