DEUS EX MACHINA, AFGHANISTAN

by Bonnie Naradzay

Gen. Austin “Scott” Miller speaks during an official handover ceremony in Kabul. Hours later, Miller departed in a Black Hawk helicopter. —The Washington Post, July 12, 2021. Credit: Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images via The Washington Post.

The Vietnamese mechanic in the VW repair place 

fixed my car radio today and as I drove off,

I heard the BBC’s news about Afghanistan:

American bombs dropped from the air, in a war

now directed from Tampa, Florida, are killing

the doomed citizens caught in the crossfire 

between the Taliban and the Afghan troops, 

abandoned in what’s called a “civil war,” 

but it’s not. Translators are beheaded now; 

you can read about how we betrayed them. 

The war cost over two trillion dollars, not 

counting the dead, the maimed, ruined lives. 

(“History will not forget it,” Haji Sakhi said, 

as he fled with his daughters to save them from 

the Taliban again.) We turned off the electricity 

in Bagram and left in the dead of night. Who recalls 

the taxi driver, whom our countrymen tortured 

in Bagram, the old abandoned Soviet base, nearly 

twenty years ago? Mr. Dilawar was dead, 

they said, before they cut him down. "Our job," 

explained the last American commander there,

"is just not to forget." His Black Hawk helicopter

lifted him up in a cloud of dust: our deus ex machina.

Bonnie Naradzay leads poetry salons at a day shelter for homeless people and also at a retirement community, both in Washington DC. Poems are in AGNI, New Letters (Pushcart nomination), RHINO, Kenyon Review Online, Tampa Review, Tar River Poetry, Florida Review Online, EPOCH, The American Journal of Poetry, Xavier Review, Pinch (Pushcart nomination), The New Verse News, and countless others.

LIVE-STREAMING GENOCIDE

by Bonnie Naradzay

On the one hand,
A 19-year-old journalist, Hassan Hamad, 
was assassinated by Israel’s army;
they’d warned him on WhatsApp to stop 
filming the killing of Gazans by the IDF, 
the most moral army in the world.  
That they’d come after him. 
This is your last warning, they said. 
And they did, with a drone strike
on his home in Jabaliya, 
a refugee camp in northern Gaza. 
You can see on this video
a few journalists collecting 
what remained of his body in a shoebox 
for burial.The inscrutable grief.  
On the other hand, Israel’s army
freely shares videos of their massacres
of unarmed Gazans, on Israeli dating apps, 
for clicks, with mocking songs:
“We’re launching Operation 8th Candle
of Hanukkah, the burning of Shuja’iyya
neighborhood. Let our enemies learn 
and be deterred. This is what we’ll do 
to all our enemies, and not a memory 
will be left of them for we will annihilate 
them all to dust.”  With impunity.

Bonnie Naradzay's manuscript will be published in 2025 by Slant Books. For years she has lef weekly poetry sessions at day shelters for homeless people and at a retirement center, all in Washington DC. Three times nominated for a Pushcart, her poems have appeared in AGNI, New Letters, RHINO, Kenyon Review Online, Tampa Review, EPOCH, Dappled Things, Cumberland River Review, New Verse News, and other places.. In 2010 she won the University of New Orleans Poetry Prize—a month’s stay in the South Tyrol castle of Ezra Pound’s daughter, Mary; there, she had tea with Mary, hiked the Dolomites, and read Pound’s early poems.

ABEL ASKS HIS BROTHER WHAT CAME OVER HIM

by Bonnie Naradzay

CAIN ET ABEL (CAIN AND ABEL), 1960, an original color lithograph by Marc Chagall designed for and published by VERVE for the volume Dessins pour La Bible.

after Agnieszka Tworek

 

If I gave the best when I offered my sheep

while your harvest fell short of the mark,

why turn against me? There was still time–

 

Now my blood cries out from the ground

you have claimed as your own. You know

the land mine you rigged to me will explode.

 

Alas, the loaf of bread I’d held, this pool of blood.

How could you choose to bludgeon my cows,

to wreak your vengeance against them too?

 

We are brothers; yet you attacked my humanity,

dragged me with your arms. Let me feel the snow

fall across my face as I say goodbye to life.  

Bonnie Naradzay’s poems have appeared in AGNI, New Letters (Pushcart nomination), RHINO, Kenyon Review Online, Tampa Review, Florida Review Online, EPOCH, Pinch (Pushcart nomination), Potomac Review, and others. Her essay on friendship was published in 2020 in the anthology Deep Beauty. For many years she has convened poetry salons with homeless people and with residents of retirement communities in the Washington DC area.

ANTIGONE IN MARIUPOL

by Bonnie Naradzay

Mariupol, Ukraine 17 April 2022. REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko

I searched the ruined city for my brother

to consecrate him with a proper burial.

Snow was still falling in the cold spring then.

I stopped at a body pockmarked with bullets;

the fingers on each hand had been bent backwards.

I came upon a corpse without a head. 

Do I know him?  Oh, they are all my brothers,  

in mass graves everywhere, shoved into ditches, 

dead in the midst of life from this unholy invasion.

Now I myself am buried—in tunnels below the city,   

refusing to surrender to the enemy king who said

not even a fly will be allowed to leave alive.  

Sentries are everywhere, barricading the doors. 

Where oh where is the civilized world?

Some day, perhaps, Sophocles will create a tragedy

for people to witness—and make sense of this.

Bonnie Naradzay leads poetry salons at a day shelter for homeless people and also at a retirement community, both in Washington DC. Poems are in AGNI, New Letters (Pushcart nomination), RHINO, Kenyon Review online, Tampa Review, Florida Review online, EPOCH, The American Journal of Poetry, and others. While in graduate school, she took a class that Robert Lowell taught: “The King James Bible as English Poetry.” In 2010 she was awarded the New Orleans MFA poetry prize: a month’s stay with Ezra Pound’s daughter Mary in her castle in Northern Italy. While there, she had tea with Mary, heard cuckoos calling during mating season, and hiked in the Dolomites.

OCTOBER OLIVE HARVEST

by Bonnie Naradzay


The time for harvesting olives heightens the ancient moan of violence.
Palestine, your olive oil has survived the deadly zone of violence.

The sound of Arabic floats above silvery trees in ancient olive groves.
Whole families, visible in the fields: targets for stone hurling violence.

Our trees, bulldozed.  We’ll plant more, and water them with our tears.
Arson has carried away our harvest with its fiery wind-blown violence.

O Hebron, the IDF militants are complacent and look the other way.
Trespassing, masked settlers swing chains: bone breaking violence.

What use, coming to the table, weakly mouthing conciliatory terms?
I tell you, Nablus reels from rubber bullets, the harsh tone of violence.

The police station’s located in an illegal settlement.  Why complain?
Eye-witness alone are left to smuggle the word of this unknown violence.

Where are the village festivals and celebrations at olive harvest time?
Instead of sowing seeds, our children grow to anger, honed from violence.


Bonnie Naradzay lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, earned an MFA from the University of Southern Maine (Stonecoast) in 2008, and has published in numerous print and online journals.
______________________________________________________

BARBARIANS AT THE GATE

by Bonnie Naradzay

                with a line from Richard Wilbur

Russia is likely to seize control of the entire Luhansk region of Ukraine within a few weeks, a senior U.S. defense official said, as Ukraine sustains heavy casualties and its supplies of ammunition dwindle. Such a move would leave Russia short of its war aims of capturing all of Luhansk and Donetsk, which together make up the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. But it would still amount to a win for Russian forces and create a new de facto front line that could last for some time. —The Washington Post, June 11, 2022. Photo: Black smoke and dirt rise from Severodonetsk during battle between Russian and Ukrainian troops in eastern Ukraine's Donbas region June 9. (Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images)

After reading how the internet takes 

us into a circle of doom because it keeps

us in the recent past, after recursively wading 

into news again about the dark tides of war, 

the brutal devastation in Ukraine, 

the pleas that we not forget their pain,

I thought of Xerxes' bridge of pontoons

over the Hellespont after Darius, stopped 

by the battle at Marathon, failed to subjugate 

the Greeks.  The pontoon bridge collapsed. 

Xerxes, after having his engineers beheaded,

commanded the waters to be lashed

three hundred times.  Shackles were thrown 

into the sea for symbolic effect,

which makes me think of Herodotus,

who changed the meaning of "barbarian”

because of what Xerxes did.

Here I stray again to the continuous loop

of the near past, when Russian invaders 

built a "pontoon" bridge over a river 

not once but twice, with predictable results.

During the Persian invasion at Thermopylae,

that narrow pass, Xerxes asked the Greeks 

to surrender, and Leonidas dared him 

to come take their weapons.

The valiant 300 fought to their deaths,

hoping to buy time for reinforcements to arrive.  

I am thinking of the fighters who were trapped 

in Mariupol, woefully outnumbered; 

of those surrounded now in east Ukraine, 

buying time for the delivery of weapons 

and missile systems they must beg for

in that endless caravan of death.

How quickly we recoil from the page,

leaving us dumbstruck and with an ache.

Bonnie Naradzay’s poems and essays have appeared in AGNI, New Letters (Pushcart Nomination), RHINO, Kenyon Review Online, Tampa Review, Florida Review Online, EPOCH, Episcopal Theological Review, Pinch (Pushcart nomination), Birmingham Review, Colloquy, and others. While in graduate school, she participated in a class taught by Robert Lowell: “The King James Bible as English Literature.”  In 2010, she won the University of New Orleans MFA Program’s Prize: a month’s stay with Ezra Pound’s daughter, Mary, in her castle in the Italian Dolomites.  While there, she enjoyed hearing cuckoos, having tea with Mary, hiking in the Dolomites, and viewing the suit Ezra Pound wore when he lived there.  

For many years she has convened poetry salons with homeless people in day shelters and with retirement community residents in Washington DC.

THE US VETOED A CEASEFIRE IN GAZA

by Bonnie Naradzay

Around noon today, December 16, 2023 a sniper of the IDF murdered two Christian women inside the Holy Family Parish in Gaza, where the majority of Christian families has taken refuge since the start of the war…. Seven more people were shot and wounded as they tried to protect others inside the church compound. No warning was given, no notification was provided. They were shot in cold blood inside the premises of the Parish, where there are no belligerents. Earlier in the morning, a rocket fired from an IDF tank targeted the Convent of the Sisters of Mother Theresa (Missionaries of Charity). The Convent is home to over 54 disabled persons and is part of the church compound, which was signaled as a place of worship since the beginning of the war. The building’s generator (the only source of electricity) and the fuel resources were destroyed. The house was damaged by the resulting explosion and massive fire. Two more rockets, fired by an IDF tank, targeted the same Convent and rendered the home uninhabitable. The 54 disabled persons are currently displaced and without access to the respirators that some of them need to survive. —Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, December 16, 2023

The US vetoed a ceasefire in Gaza.  

                        Rushed more weapons.  

We are not allowed to use the word “genocide.”  

            In Bethlehem the nativity scene is piled 

with rocks and debris. More than 20,000 killed.  Biden is angry

about poll numbers.  Paul asked me to bring poems next time that rhyme.  

The newspaper yesterday said, “More Americans own stocks.” 

Homeowners are installing heat pumps this winter.

The US advised Israel to be more surgical.   Hospitals and schools

were targeted with precision.  Two churches, damaged.  Doctors were arrested.

An Israeli official said “There are no churches, no Christians in Gaza.”

People were sheltering in the church.  Hospitals and schools,  targeted. 

Anything that moves.  The US vetoed.  In Bethlehem. 

poems that rhyme.    not allowed.     Poll numbers.  demolished

more surgical next time.   Rocks and debris. 

The US vetoed a ceasefire in Gaza. 

 

Bonnie Naradzay's manuscript will be published by Slant Books next year.  She leads weekly poetry sessions at day shelters for homeless people and at a retirement center, all in Washington DC.  Three times nominated for a Pushcart, her poems have appeared in AGNI, New Letters, RHINO, Kenyon Review, Tampa Review, EPOCH, Split This Rock, Dappled Things, and other sites. In 2010 she won the University of New Orleans Poetry Prize—a month’s stay in the South Tyrol castle of Ezra Pound’s daughter, Mary; there, she had tea with Mary, hiked the Dolomites, and read Pound’s early poems.

A VISIT TO GUANTANAMO

by Bonnie Naradzay


This is the island of wire pens.

The pens were built for men who fled
their Haitian shacks in leaking crafts
and rowed to the north in the endless sea.

But Coast Guard cruisers barred the way
and fished them out most cunningly,
and sent them to stew on the island of wire pens.

They broiled in the sun on the island in wire pens.
Then soldiers had them lie down flat
And shipped them back to Port au Prince.

These are Islamic renditioned men,
delivered all trussed up on planks,
that reside on this island of wire pens.

The Red Cross saw the ugly stalls
with concrete floors and manacles.
“These men need roofs for their wire pens.”

This is the home of styrofoam cups
where men contrive to write in codes
and live and die on the island of wire pens.

This is Jumah, robbed when he fled Afghanistan,
imprisoned, sold to soldiers bankrolled to buy
enemy combatants posing as friends.

This is the uniformed conscript
billeted in air-cooled Quonset huts
who gamely points out the basketball court

built for those who’ve signed
confessions and wear black hoods,
sequestered far from alien homes,

and die in codes on the island of wire pens.


Bonnie Naradzay is a graduate of the Stonecoast MFA program and has published poems in JAMA, SLAB, The Heartland Review, and numerous online publications.
______________________________________________________

ENHANCED INTERROGATION TECHNIQUE

by Bonnie Naradzay


When you want to talk, just move your fingers.
They tied me to a plank,
fixed a tube to the tap at the sink,
jammed a block in my mouth
to force it open,
wrapped my head in a rag.

The rag was soaked rapidly,
water flowing into my mouth and nose.
I had the impression of drowning
and the terrible agony of death itself
took possession of me.

In spite of myself, my fingers shook uncontrollably.
In the gloom, I saw the captain with a cigarette
between his lips hitting my stomach with his fist
to make me throw up the water I had swallowed.
I hardly felt the blows.

“Well, then?” But I remained silent.
They put my head under again.
This time I clenched my fists,
forcing the nails into my palms.
I did not move my hands.

Three times I feared that terrible
moment when I felt myself losing
control - while fighting
with all my might not to die.
The last time, I lost consciousness.
When you want to talk, just move your fingers.

From Henri Alleg’s memoir of the Algerian war. Alleg was a French journalist who supported Algerian independence. This instance of his “ waterboarding” at the hands of French authorities, used also by the Khmer Rouge, Gestapo, Soviet Gulags and most recently by the American CIA, which terms this form of torture “Enhanced Interrogation Technique,” was included in a complaint filed against Rumsfeld.

Bonnie Naradzay is a degree candidate at the Stonecoast low residency MFA program. She has a poem scheduled to be published in JAMA next month and has poetry in numerous online publications.

POEM ON BLUE AFTER READING RILKE AND THE DAILY NEWS

by Bonnie Naradzay


Blue letter paper, the shadowy blue
of Egyptian hieroglyphs, a folding

of hands. October morning in Paris –
complete, supportless blue.

In Van Gogh, the self-contained
blue. Listening and thunderstorm

blue in Cezanne, bourgeois cotton,
opaque bluish white, greenish blue.

Cobalt patterns, certain tones,
light cloudy bluishness, heavy

dark-blue stripe, this rolling of red
into blue, hydrangea petals, waxy

blue of Pompeiian wall paintings,
densely quilted blue, heavenly

morning glory, Nabokov’s butterfly,
ice-blue gloves of the riot-armed

INS, worn to frisk immigrants caught
working at Swift meat-packing plants.

Prison-issued denim of the inmates
replacing them, paid 60 cents a day.

Crying the blues. Slope of curved hills
full of revolt, Blue, Blue, Blue.


Bonnie Naradzay has a poem in the February 7, 2007 issue of JAMA, a poem in the Spring 2007 issue of SLAB, and poems in numerous online journals. She is a student in the Stonecoast MFA program and seeks signs of hope for this dark planet.

THE YEAR IN REVIEW

by Bonnie Naradzay

Detail of cover of book by Bearded Doctor.

after Ilya Kaminsky

we lived happily, forgive us, 

we survived, even thrived, 

the way we slunk into the mud

beside the walkways, gave in, 

turned our eyes away, gestured 

with gratitude, wore masks, 

our eyeglasses clouding over, 

vision blurred, happily seeing

hypocrites roll up their sleeves, 

watch them all jump the lines, 

pull rank, Pence with his naked 

flabby arm, bravely showing 

how it’s done, we stood aside,

read about the one pardoned 

for ordering her police dog

to savage a homeless man 

backed against the wall,

showing how it’s done, 

war criminals pardoned,

mercenaries, paid with 

our taxes, gunning down

children with impunity, 

the nakedness of our nation,

we bowed in obeisance, 

sidled by, raised our hands,

excused ourselves, waved 

a note from the teacher,

we lived happily (forgive us)

                     the long year, is it over yet?  

     

Bonnie Naradzay's recent poems are in AGNI, the American Journal of Poetry, New Letters (Pushcart nomination), RHINO, Tar River Poetry, EPOCH, Tampa Review, Kenyon Review Online, Potomac Review, Xavier Review, and One Magazine. For many years she has led poetry workshops at a day shelter for the homeless and at a retirement center, both in Washington, DC.   

WHAT KIND OF TIMES ARE THESE?

by Bonnie Naradzay

Israel has grandiosely labeled its latest genocidal move "Operation Gideon's Chariots" wherein, moving from siege to seizure, it plans the bloody conquest, ethnic cleansing, and permanent recolonization of Gaza, using the rhetoric of holy war to justify unholy mass destruction - this, even as many of the Palestinian children who've somehow survived their savage 18 months of carnage now slowly starve to death. Photo: Osama Al-Raqab, 6, is one of tens of thousands of Gazan children slowly starving. Screenshot from NBC. —Common Dreams, May 6, 2025

What kind of times are these,
asked Brecht, when a conversation 
about trees is almost a crime 
because it entails a silence about 
so many misdeeds!  And so
is it fitting to converse about
the ephemeral cherry blossoms
that graced the Tidal Basin trees.?
Elected felons spout obscenities. 
“Have you no sense of decency,” 
someone finally asked McCarthy.
I have grown numb to incivilities. 
The Slaughter of the Innocents
continues again without a pause,
since Israel broke the ceasefire
two months ago and halted
all food, water, and medicine.
Yet people here are arrested
and deported for decrying 
the deliberate slaughter
and starvation of the people
of Gaza, the burning of tents 
in “safe zones” where 
the displaced are sleeping.
Israel calls its war crimes
“Operation Gideon’s Chariots.”
What kind of times are these?
Yesterday, and again today,
for those still counting, 
Israel detonated drones 
and US-made bunker bombs 
in Gaza, killing over 100 
people each day; and 27 
children were said to have 
starved to death already today 
you could count all their ribs 
in these dark times
when we cannot see
the forest for the trees.

Bonnie Naradzay’s manuscript will be published this year by Slant Books.  For years, she has led weekly poetry sessions at homeless shelters and a retirement community.  Poems, three of which have been nominated for Pushcarts, have appeared in AGNI, New Letters, RHINO, Tampa Review, EPOCH, Dappled Things, and other places. While at Harvard she was in Robert Lowell’s class on “The King James Bible as English Literature.” In 2010 she was awarded the University of New Orleans Poetry Prize – a month’s stay in Northern Italy – in the South Tyrol castle of Ezra Pound’s daughter Mary.  There, Bonnie had tea with Mary, hiked the Dolomites, and read drafts of Pound’s translations. 

REGIME CHANGE

by Bonnie Naradzay

Remember when Muntadhar al-Zaidi, 
an Iraqi journalist, hurled his shoes 
at Mission Accomplished Bush, 
the man incapable of introspection? 
Bush ducked.  Mission Accomplished.
Bush painted himself relaxed
in the bathtub, pink toes showing.
“This is a gift from the Iraqis; 
this is the farewell kiss, you dog!” 
Zaidi shouted in Arabic.  
“You feel bitterness as you see people's pain 
24 hours a day,” Zaidi said.
Bush ducked.  Mission Accomplished.
Corporations made a lot of money off the unprovoked war.
Bush painted himself relaxed
in the bathtub, pink toes showing.
You could hear cries of pain, 
muffled from behind a door, 
during the news conference. 
During the Q&A’s, 
blood spatters on the carpet.
 “You feel bitterness as you see people's pain 
24 hours a day,” Zaidi said.  
Bush ducked.  Mission Accomplished.
Corporations made a lot of money off the unprovoked war.
Bush painted himself relaxed
in the bathtub, pink toes showing.

Left: self-portrait by George W. Bush; Right: take-off by Laura Finck.

Bonnie Naradzay's poems have appeared in AGNI, New Letters (Pushcart Nomination), RHINO, Kenyon Review online, Tampa Review, Florida Review online, EPOCH, Crab Creek Review, Cider Press Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Poetry Miscellany, and other places. She leads poetry salons at day shelters for the homeless and also at a retirement center, all in Washington, DC. 

BLOSSOMS

by Bonnie Naradzay

In Gaza City, Riad Ishkontana mourned the death of one of his children on Sunday. Mr. Ishkontana said that when rescuers pulled him and his 7-year-old daughter from the rubble of his home after an airstrike, he awoke to a new life—one without his wife and four other children. Credit:Hosam Salem for The New York Times, May 19, 2021

I am feeling numb, reading about stun guns

rubber tipped bullets and tear gas cannisters

that I pay for with my taxes, and the Boeing 

weapons sales, mainly kits transforming bombs 

into precision missiles dropped from planes 

on Gaza, as before. Armed forces wreck Minarets 

during Ramadan. The call to prayer, up in flames.

Worshippers at the mosque are felled with bullets.

Evictions are enforced by the Courts, the way 

it’s always done. Snipers target fleeing children;

they’ve done it all before.  When will we learn?

Here, orange blossoms are exploding in the sun.

I am feeling numb, reading about stun guns.

 

Bonnie Naradzay’s recent poems are in AGNI, the American Journal of Poetry, New Letters (Pushcart nomination), RHINO, Tar River Poetry, EPOCH, Tampa Review, Kenyon Review Online, Potomac Review, Xavier Review, 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. 

WHILE READING THE GUARDIAN, I RECOGNIZE A FAMILIAR NARRATIVE

 by Bonnie Naradzay

A three-year-old Palestinian boy has died in hospital, four days after he was shot in the head by Israeli soldiers while riding in a car with his father in the occupied West Bank. Mohammed al-Tamimi (above) was airlifted to the Sheba hospital near Tel Aviv after the incident on Thursday night and remained in a critical condition until medical officials announced his death on Monday. His father, Haitham al-Tamimi, 40, is still being treated at a Palestinian hospital. His injuries are not believed to be life-threatening. —The Guardian, June 5, 2023

After blocking entrances to a village 

in the Occupied West Bank,

Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) shot 

a father and his three year old boy

because they lived there.  

 

Bullets went through the boy’s head;

he was airlifted to a Jewish hospital

near Tel Aviv.  They shoot the boy

then act as if they want to save him.  

A few days later he’s dead.

 

His father’s in a Palestinian hospital bed.  

What is life to him now?

The story was, the IDF said,

that the bullets were shot by Palestinians.

This is how the narrative always starts.

 

Then the word “crossfire” is used.

But eyewitnesses said there was no other gunfire.

Then the IDF admits they shot the father and his son

and “regrets harm to noncombatants. Doing everything 

in its power to prevent…” The case is closed.

Bonnie Naradzay’s poems have appeared in AGNI, New Letters (Pushcart nomination), RHINO, Kenyon Review online, Tampa Review, Florida Review online, EPOCH, Dappled Things, The Birmingham Poetry Review, American Journal of Poetry, Poetry Miscellany, and other places. In 2010 she was awarded the New Orleans MFA program’s poetry prize: a month’s stay in the castle of Ezra Pound’s daughter, Mary. For many years, she has led regular poetry sessions at day shelters for the homeless and also at a retirement center, all in Washington, DC. 

SOME DAY, PERHAPS...

IT WILL HELP TO REMEMBER THESE TROUBLES AS WELL.*

by Bonnie Naradzay

*Aeneas to his men, after theirs is the only ship

  to survive a violent storm at sea near Carthage.

         

Friends, a study of The Black Death states the plague 

may have come from outer space. The Mars Rover 

landed in a dried up lake. Perseverance is transporting 

images home from the red planet. On earth, we learn 

that magnetic north and south may be flipping sides, 

an ominous event, according to weakening attractions 

and ancient iron shards stuck pointing the wrong way. 

In Galveston, medical workers asked for a refrigerated 

truck to store the dead bodies. Thousands of turtles 

stunned by the cold have gone to a convention center 

in the backs of station wagons. Ted Cruz got on the plane

in jeans but went the wrong way, or the optics were wrong.

Sweet Thames, and Virgil, flow gently while I end my song.

Bonnie Naradzay leads poetry workshops at a day shelter for homeless people and at a retirement center, both in Washington DC.  Recent poems are in AGNI, New Letters (Pushcart nomination), Kenyon Review Online, RHINO, Tar River Poetry, Tampa Review, Poet Lore, EPOCH, Northern Virginia Review, Anglican Theological Review, Seminary Ridge Review, and The Ekphrastic Review.

TALKING ABOUT TREES

by Bonnie Naradzay

The Great Conjunction of 2020 will brighten the darkest day of the year as the two giant planets of our solar system draw closer together in the night sky than they have been in centuries. By chance, the day that Jupiter and Saturn will appear closest for Earth-based stargazers is Dec. 21, the winter solstice, which is the longest night of the year in the northern hemisphere. Photo: The galactic core area of the Milky Way over Maskinonge Pond in Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta on July 14, 2020. Jupiter is the bright object at left, with Saturn dimmer to the left (east) of Jupiter.Alan Dyer / Universal Images Group via Getty Images file via NBC, December 9, 2020.

What kind of times are they, when

A talk about trees is almost a crime

Because it implies silence about so many horrors?                       

—Bertolt Brecht, “To those Born Later”

 

Thin ice limned the pond early this morning

and a slick of frost dazzled the green fields

yet pink blossoms still drifted across a few limbs

of the lone ornamental cherry tree.

In the slant of sun, the great blue heron stood

knee deep in water, and ducks have returned

among reflected shapes of pondside trees – 

bare branches outstretched like hands of penitents.

I have been arguing all evening with my friend

via email about Odysseus. He says Odysseus 

could have built that raft any time he wanted 

to escape from Calypso’s island, but I say not until

Athena persuaded Zeus to send Hermes down.  

I see Odysseus down by the seashore, weeping there,

as the great hexameters roll out in the receding waves.

Then we spar about the Suitors. They must be killed, 

he says, for their conspiracy. I ask, what about diplomacy?  

(It is Advent. The people are armed for insurrections here, 

spouting obscenities. “Sir, have you no sense of decency,” 

someone finally asked McCarthy, not so long ago.)  

My friend mentions Thersites. He has me there.

Jesus healed the blind man and asked him what he saw.

He said, “I see men like trees walking.”

Tonight I see two planets grow closer in the night sky.

(I have grown numb about the latest attacks

on civility.) Priam came for Hector’s body 

in the dead of night. Achilles welcomed him

and stopped the war for Hector’s funeral rites.

Recently I read about the Christmas truce in World War I

for the burial of the dead. Someone brought lights.

Yes, there will also be singing. About the dark times.

       

Bonnie Naradzay's recent poems are in AGNI, the American Journal of Poetry, New Letters (Pushcart nomination), RHINO, Tar River Poetry, EPOCH, Tampa Review, Kenyon Review Online, Potomac Review, Xavier Review, and One Magazine. For many years she has led poetry workshops at a day shelter for the homeless and at a retirement center, both in Washington, DC.                                          

NEWS OF THE WORLD THROUGH ECLIPSE GLASSES

by Bonnie Naradzay

A man detained by the Israeli military in northern Gaza shows injuries on his wrists at al-Najjar hospital in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on 24 December 2023 (AFP/Said Khatib)

Israeli doctor says detained Palestinians are undergoing ‘routine’ amputations for handcuff injuries. —CNN, April 6, 2024

On my listserve, someone posts her fears 

that the pairs of eclipse glasses she ordered 

will not arrive in time. A neighbor shares a link

from NASA on how to make a pinhole camera.

In the news, I read about Palestinians detained 

outside an Israeli military base. They were given

numbers and lost their names. A doctor said

the men are chained day and night, blindfolded

at all times, hands bound behind their backs,

fed through straws. Forced to wear diapers,

dehumanized. Bound to a fence for prolonged 

times, consecutive days. Because of the injuries

caused by the shackles, the doctor performs 

“routine amputations” of their legs. At church 

this morning, after our group’s discussion 

of the Sunday readings, a woman talks about 

how good God is to her family and he knows 

what’s best for us. How can she say this,

I think, remembering Ivan Karamazov, 

“The Grand Inquisitor.” Why would God 

permit such suffering in the world?   

The Israeli Defense Force official replied

that every procedure is within the framework

of the Law and is done with “extreme care

for the human dignity of the detainees.”

All day, the wind’s unrest builds and disperses 

clouds as I try to make sense of such cruelty.

Bonnie Naradzay's manuscript will be published by Slant Books this year.  She leads weekly poetry sessions at day shelters for homeless people and at a retirement center, all in Washington DC.  Three times nominated for a Pushcart, her poems have appeared in AGNI, New Letters, RHINO, Kenyon Review, Tampa Review, EPOCH, Split This Rock, Dappled Things, and other sites. In 2010 she won the University of New Orleans Poetry Prize—a month’s stay in the South Tyrol castle of Ezra Pound’s daughter, Mary; there, she had tea with Mary, hiked the Dolomites, and read Pound’s early poems.