Poem of the Week: Bonnie Naradzay

Hanover County Jail, Commonwealth of Virginia

Lunch today for the inmates means white bread

and a slice of baloney. Dinner is more of the same.

The limit now - two meals a day to stay in budget.

The jail's run by a profit-making corporation.

Vending machines hold other selections,

like undated Twinkies and cinnamon buns.

Immigration rents beds here

for young, married Chinese women

without papers, only fake passports they bought in haste.

Fearing reprisals, they fled the provinces, their homes and families.

For one bore a child after marrying too young, at twenty,

and another had a second child, a girl.

One has an abscessed tooth.

As a volunteer, I write down her plight,

mainly that she cannot pay a Chinese-speaking lawyer

in New York City, her only hope, or even call long distance,

collect. I read her confession, search for gestures.

The budget does not fund dental work, I'm told.

What's more, they charge for aspirin.

The next one, wearing the same ink-blue pajamas

and plastic shower shoes,

holds her stomach, speaks of constant pain.

The doctor comes once a month

and sees only those who signed up long before.

The system weeds out malingerers, the female warden says,

handing me a sheaf of small-print regulations.

-Bonnie Naradzay

Used by permission.

In the 1960's, while a graduate student at Harvard, Bonnie Naradzay studied "The Kings James Bible as English Literature" with Robert Lowell. In January 2008 she earned her MFA in poetry from Stonecoast, at the University of Southern Maine. She was the 2010 Winner, Poetry Genre, in the competition sponsored by the University of New Orleans MFA program. Also in 2010, one of her poems was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. A long-time resident of the Washington D.C. area, she has volunteered at Catholic Worker shelters by cooking lunch and mentoring writing projects; she has also volunteered to visit prisons for immigrant rights organizations.

Naradzay attended Split This Rock Poetry Festival: Poems of Provocation & Witness 2008 and 2010.

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Upcoming Kensington Row Bookshop Poetry Readings

Kensington Row Bookshop Poetry Readings
3786 Howard Avenue
Kensington MD 20895
301 949 9416.
Dec. 2, 2009, then Jan-June 2010
Last Wednesdays of the month.
Come early to browse & chat.
Refreshments provided.
An open reading will follow. Free.

On Wednesday, 2 December 2009, 7 pm, Greg McBride and Lyn Lifshin will read their poetry.

Greg McBride, a Vietnam veteran who practiced law for 30 years, edits Innisfree Poetry Journal. His work appears in Cimarron, Connecticut, Gettysburg, and Southern Poetry Reviews; New York Quarterly, Poet Lore, and River Styx. He won Boulevard's 2008 Emerging Poet Prize, and has a 2009 chapbook, Back of the Envelope.

Lyn Lifshin is the author of the germinal "No More Apologizing" proclamation, editor of the mother-daughter Tangled Vines anthology, and subject of an award-winning documentary film, Not Make of Glass. Her 120 books include Marilyn Monroe, Blue Tattoo, the Ruffian and Barbaro race-horse books, and three Black Sparrow books, Cold Comfort, Before It's Light, and Another Woman Who Looks Like Me.

On Wednesday, 27 January 2010, 7 pm, Bonnie Naradzay, Lee Giesecke, and Nancy Allinson will read their poetry. They are members of the Federal Poets, the Metro area's longest running workshop, which publishes The Federal Poet.