Tag: Bonnie Naradzay

Meditation (Intermission) by Bonnie Naradzay

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Meditation (Intermission)

…what if the master of the show who engaged an actor
were to dismiss him from the stage? “But I have not spoken
my five acts, only three.” “What you say is true, but in life
three acts are the whole play.”

        — Marcus Aurelius

It’s all I think about these days, when intermission is,
will it ever come, has it passed, and how many scenes
are in this act that’s so interminable, if it’s not the last.
Could this be the whole play? Hamlet wanted more time.
The end seems hurried; everyone but Horatio falls dead
at the banquet, then Fortinbras appears. The play’s
the thing! Mother’s things are boxed up in a pre-fab shed
behind my sister’s place. Closets bulge with our belongings,
and what are they for? My father’s French wife got rid
of all he owned as soon as he died although I’d wanted
something to remember him by. She had him cremated;
then the VA sent his ashes east to Arlington Cemetery.
My sister wanted a ceremony right away to lay him
to rest behind a small locked door. I could not face it.

*

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, all in Washington DC. Poems, three of which have been nominated for Pushcarts, have appeared in AGNI, New Letters, RHINO, Tampa Review, EPOCH, Dappled Things, and many 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.
https://www.bonnienaradzay.com

ONE ART’s 2024 Pushcart Prize Nominations

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ONE ART’s 2024 Pushcart Prize Nominations

Abby E. Murray – What It’s Like to Wonder Whose Country It Was First (12.11.23)

Bonnie Naradzay – Bede’s Sparrow (11.1.23)

Linda Laderman – Final Score (10.9.23)

Hayley Mitchell Haugen – Reserved (8.27.23)

Jennifer Garfield – self portrait at 39 (8.2.23)

Cheryl Baldi – THE DAY FALLING TO PIECES (7.30.23)

Three Poems by Bonnie Naradzay

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Bede’s Sparrow

Had I not met the souls who gather at Miriam’s Kitchen
each morning for a meal, I could not have shared poems
that sway like sensate trees, that are not just standing there
stripped of leaves, nor could I have heard Carl, who sleeps
near the M Street Bridge, say he likes how the shadows
of birds’ wings pass over his heart. I would not have seen
the robin lying dead on the sidewalk. Did it fall from the sky,
unlike the geese that glide overhead trailing their legs in flight,
or the starlings appearing to wait in the wings only to vanish
from sight? But since then I have lifted my eyes to the rafters
and seen Bede’s sparrow fly through the church basement
where we linger before disappearing into the darkening light.

*

Poetry Salon in the Homeless Day Shelter

Today we read “Gin River,” a poem by Tyree Daye.
In it, Bill Broonzy is singing “When I Been Drinking,”
and people dance in the river, down in rural Carolina.

We end with James Wright’s persona poem, “Saint Judas.”
Now it’s time to write, and Ibrahim, in the voice of Moses,
dares the Pharaoh to make the sun go from west to east.

Chuck wears the chef’s jacket he found in a bag of donations.
On the pocket, stitched in blue cursive: “Ramon.”
It’s his nom de plume. Oh, Ramon – where are you now?

*

Gilgamesh at the Retirement Center

We conclude the annual poetry reading ritual for the residents,
and I delight in the bacon-wrapped scallops impaled on toothpicks.
Ecstatic to find two kinds of wine, I am feeling satisfied.

At some point during dinner, we talk about what we’re reading.
When I say I’m enjoying the epic of Gilgamesh, Celia asks me
what that ancient tale is all about. I launch into the highlights,

including the grand Sumerian city of Uruk, its meaningful bricks,
the faithful friend Enkido, his tragic death, the subsequent quest
for immortality, how Gilgamesh fails his test by falling asleep

instead of staying awake for a week and loses out on eternal life
(sleeping again) when a snake eats the fabled plant and sheds its skin.
Despite all this, Celia thinks I mean the Hindu elephant god, Ganesh.

For a moment I forget who I am, and where. Then I think of Odysseus,
asleep in the boat to Ithaka; Athena disguised the island with mist.
So I change the subject to Odysseus, that time he rises out of the sea

from his long swim, still clutching the rock Calypso gave him,
and he sees in the rock a mist parting to show the years ahead. His bed.
But the wine is wearing off. I’ll go, now, to sleep like Gilgamesh.

*

Bonnie Naradzay leads weekly poetry “salons” at day shelters for homeless people and at a retirement center, all in Washington DC. Twice nominated for a Pushcart prize, 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. While there, Bonnie enjoyed having tea with Mary, hiking in the Dolomites, and reading early versions of the Pisan Cantos. Her manuscript , “Invited to the Feast,” will be published by Slant Books.

One-Sided Conversation by Bonnie Naradzay

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One-Sided Conversation

A man in Japan, in a phone booth
he built overlooking the Pacific,
holds the receiver
of a disconnected rotary phone
and calls into the wind.
He is talking to his dead cousin,
whom he misses terribly and who
died before the tsunami arrived.
Now he shares his phone booth
with the relatives of all who are dead
or missing out there somewhere.
People come from all over.
I can’t hear him, but he heard me,
a woman said of her son, who died
in a fire. I can go on living now.

*

Bonnie Naradzay’s poems have appeared in New Letters, AGNI, EPOCH, RHINO, American Journal of Poetry, Kenyon Review Online, Florida Review Online, Tampa Review, Tar River Review, The Guardian, and others. For years, she has led poetry salons at a homeless day shelter and a retirement center in Washington, DC.

Haiku in the Day Shelter for the Homeless by Bonnie Naradzay

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Haiku in the Day Shelter for the Homeless

This morning we read haikus.
Not just Basho, whose name
means “plantain tree,” and Issa,
whose name means “cup of tea,”
but also Richard Wright,
born in Mississippi, who later moved
to France and wrote thousands
of haikus in his final years.
When I said Wright followed
the strict syllable count,
Leon asked, “What are syllables?”
I began to count the sounds
on my fingers: The crow flew so fast/
that he left his lonely caw
Two people liked this one by Issa –
“Once in the box
every one of them is equal –
the chess pieces.”
Eugenia wrote about three women,
regulars here, who died from drugs
in the past few weeks.
“Now in a box,” she wrote,
naming each of them in her poem.
Alessandro, responding to Basho,
wrote about constellations of stars.
And for the first time this year
Robert, tattooed up and down his arms,
was awake and sublimely alert.
He liked Issa’s The distant mountains/
are reflected in the eye/of the dragonfly.
In his eyes I saw myself reflected too,
and over the lonely fields, the crow.

*

Bonnie Naradzay’s poems have appeared in New Letters, AGNI, EPOCH, RHINO, American Journal of Poetry, Kenyon Review Online, Florida Review Online, Tampa Review, Tar River Review, The Guardian, and others. For years, she has led poetry salons at a homeless day shelter and a retirement center in Washington, DC.