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| Sculpture depicting a Great Depression breadline at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, Washington, D.C. |
This has been done before, standing in line for a long time.
Think of Soviet women who queued for hours for bread.
And I have learned about the lines of the Great Depression:
men lined up for mind-numbing jobs at assembly lines.
Think of Soviet women who stood for hours for bread
or Akhmatova outside the prison waiting for news of her son.
Here, men lined up for mind-numbing jobs at assembly lines.
These days some have it easy – food deliveries, yoga online.
Akhmatova outside the prison waited with women for news
and the chance to send a loaf of bread, or a note, inside.
These days some have it easy – food deliveries, yoga online.
Still, Camus said the plague is within us, here to stay.
I have learned about the lines of the Great Depression
where hope envisions a loaf of bread, a note from inside.
Camus wrote that the plague is within us, here to stay,
as it has always done: waiting in line for a long time.
Bonnie Naradzay’s poems have appeared most recently in American Journal of Poetry, New Letters (Pushcart nomination), RHINO, EPOCH, the Tampa Review, Tar River Poetry, and Ekphrastic Review and are slated to appear in Kenyon Review Online, AGNI, and others. For many years she has led poetry workshops at a day shelter for the homeless and at a retirement center, both in Washington, DC.
