Tag: Bonnie Proudfoot

Flight by Bonnie Proudfoot

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Flight

It was one of those times I made
it to the bus to the airport
in plenty of time, one of those
flights that felt like it might also
be on time, my love, the gate boarding
going as well as it could, checking
boarding passes, ping, ping, squeezing
a suitcase into an overhead, squeezing
my butt into seat B, all this a regular weight,
but not too heavy, but then the wait
begins, rain delays on the runway,
a sudden feeling that home is further
than ever, as if the present I live through
might not lead to the future I imagine,
the mask digging into my ears,
the air darkening outside, then finally
lifting off, rising into deeper darkness,
the long droning slog through the air,
then landing, glint of rain, dim fog settling
as the highway narrows, the scratch
of windshield wipers interminable,
gauntlet of deer mostly still as statues,
then home, the house dark except
for odd little digital dials, it’s way past
4 am now, even the pets are groggy
and you’re sleeping so soundly, but
your arms open, and for the first time
in two weeks, I release the weight
of being who I imagine that everyone
needs me to be, I lie down beside you,
the air just beginning to glow, doves
starting to call the dawn, and now,
my love, I’m so light I could fly.

*

Bonnie Proudfoot’s work has been nominated for a Pushcart and Best of the Net. She writes essays, fiction and poetry. Her novel, Goshen Road, (Swallow Press, 2020) was selected by the Women’s National Book Association for one of its Great Group Reads, Long-listed for the 2021 PEN/ Hemingway Award, and in 2022 it won the WCONA Book of the Year Award. Her poetry chapbook, Household Gods, was published by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions in 2022. She lives in Athens, Ohio, and in her spare time she creates glass art and plays blues harmonica.

Two Poems by Bonnie Proudfoot

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the question is still the wind
                    (after Ada Limón)

and will branches hold or limbs fall
where they will and will outer branches
swirl in circles, shake like a skirt,
and then how hard will each blast
blow across the highest part of
the atmosphere, twirling
the treetops, and how much the
highest branches sway, whether
more or fewer leaves can buffer,
whether thin or thicker trunks can
bear the strain, and will we hear
that terrible sound, like drumming
and hoofbeats and howls of
a wounded creature, or the sharp
gunshot cracking of a thick trunk
or trunks splitting, then toppling,
crushing brush, raw wood gaping
and maybe it all depends on
whether roots have found
their way deep enough into
the earth or maybe it’s a mystery
whether substrate below topsoil
is shallow or deep, the ground below
the ground clay or silt or sand
and the question is still the wind
how lately it seems to blow
stronger and last longer,
and should these trees that you love
really be so close to your house
but what is the other option,
a bare lawn, every yard a golf
course, ride around in your electric
scooter, only a canvas top for shade?

*

Laminectomy

It was way worse for him than
it was for me, but pretty bad
either way. Pain is an idea
that I have to push out of my mind,
a force that has to be struggled with,
but I am used to compromising. He
flat out lost the battle. Shots in his
spine did not work, neither did pills,
he could barely sleep, barely sit,
barely walk. I never heard the word Lamin-
ectomy before. It is when a surgeon carves
tissue out of the spinal cord, to create
a wider space between backbone and nerve,
a slice so deep into the center of the spine
the cut looks like the aftermath of
a knife fight, like he’s the one who
tried to run away. He did not. I sat
in the waiting room of the hospital
watching a time-lapse video of a white-barked
tree as it changed from the green budding
of spring, to flowering, to fully flushed
and green-leaved, to foliage in bursts
of bronze and ruby, to swirly leaves
flying like birds off branches to
a leafless pale trunk. Five hours.
I wonder which stage he is in,
which stage I am in. A phone rings,
a nurse nods, and a surgeon’s voice
says things went well. No bending,
no lifting, no twisting, says
the discharge nurse. A week later,
we are home. His legs spasm,
they buckle under his
weight. He leans against
the bathroom sink. I clean this
soft flesh, careful to avoid staples,
I tape a bandage over the two lips
of the wound, hoping they will
clinch together.

*

Bonnie Proudfoot is the author of the poetry chapbook Household Gods, (2022, Sheila Na Gig), as well as a novel, Goshen Road, which was longlisted for the 2021 PEN Hemingway. She has received a Pushcart Nomination, and writes poems, fiction and essays, and has had work appear in anthologies as well as journals.

Paper Dolls by Bonnie Proudfoot

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Paper Dolls

I used to sit on the floor of the screened-in porch
with my favorite cousin, ten years older,

watch her cut paper dolls, linked bodies tumbling
out of their paper frame. As soon as I was old enough,

I wanted scissors in my hand. The best ones
were my grandmother’s sewing scissors, so sharp,

I could fold over paper, cut side to side to make a family
of girls holding hands, as I got older, cut head-to-head,

the dolls all joined at the top, made a star, like when
the camera looked down on the June Taylor dancers

on the stage of the Jackie Gleason show. I watched
my cousin’s hands, so careful at cutting on the line,

how she knew how to fold, where to begin and end,
and I wanted to see the outline, the left-over paper,

how the grain of the table or pattern of a skirt
filled the gaps where the dolls used to be. I love how

scissors make a noise a little like chewing, and how
my young sons made chewing faces when they

learned how to snip. I did it too, watching them
twitch their noses, work their jaws and teeth,

and I realize I’m also talking about memory,
not about watching the self tumble into the world,

but about how the mind holds time, moments folded
like paper, linked and tumbling out of their frame.

*

Bonnie Proudfoot has published essays, fiction and poetry. Her first novel, Goshen Road, (Swallow Press, 2020) was selected by the Women’s National Book Association for one of its Great Group Reads for 2020 and Long-listed for the 2021 PEN/ Hemingway Award for debut fiction, and in 2022 it won the WCONA Book of the Year Award. Her poetry chapbook, Household Gods, was published by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions in 2022. She lives in Athens, Ohio, and in her spare time she creates glass art and plays blues harmonica.

Because it is Spring in Appalachia by Bonnie Proudfoot

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Because it is Spring in Appalachia

and the rain has stopped pummeling
the solar panels on my roof,
I begin noticing things,
the rush of green outside hits me
like a fanfare, the sun
sparkles in every droplet,
and then I realize
the applause I thought I heard
was not applause at all,
it was a pair of small birds
pecking away at the inside
of my walls because they decided
that their new nesting place
could be that little hole
in the space between the eaves.
And there it is, the outside world
has come home to roost. And me,
I couldn’t pull the trigger of the 22
on the groundhog in the blueberries,
I try to save the planet,
not just for me, alone, but so I
can share it, but not my house,
I think, yet that is
what is happening now
and here I am,
still hoping to return
to Aaron Copeland in my mind,
but the wide world has other ideas,
like a new station on the dial,
these little syncopated taps,
call on me to act or be acted upon,
and isn’t that what I secretly wanted
from this ragged, unfinished life?

*

Bonnie Proudfoot has had fiction and poetry published in the Gettysburg Review, Kestrel, Quarter After Eight, the New Ohio Review, and many other journals. Her first novel, Goshen Road, published by Ohio University’s Swallow Press (2020) was selected by the Women’s National Book Association for one of its Great Group Reads for 2020. It was Long-listed for the 2021 PEN/ Hemingway Award for debut fiction, and in 2022 it won the WCONA Book of the Year Award. Her poetry chapbook, Household Gods, is forthcoming on Sheila-Na-Gig this summer. She lives in Athens, Ohio, and in her spare time she creates glass art and plays blues harmonica.