A Brief for the Defense after Jack GIlbert by Bonnie Naradzay Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter – We are rushing to supply more billions, bombs, with phosphorus thrown in, drones and planes, too, that dropped 6,000 bombs in the first 6 days in Gaza, which is quite a feat, targeting hospitals, UN schools, no place to hide for the people trapped in the world’s largest open-air prison, so convenient for retribution, for the world’s empty abstractions, (who can envision so much death, destruction, nowhere safe left to stay, all food, water, medicine barred; children made to pay) for all the years of sorrow that are yet to come. Copyright 2023 by Bonnie Naradzay
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, The 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, where she enjoyed having tea with Mary, hiking the Dolomites, and hearing cuckoos call during mating season. 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
