This has been done before, standing in line for a long time. Think of Soviet women who queued for hours for bread. And I have learned about the lines of the Great Depression: men lined up for mind-numbing jobs at assembly lines. Think of Soviet women who stood for hours for bread or Akhmatova outside the prison waiting for news of her son. Here, men lined up for mind-numbing jobs at assembly lines. These days some have it easy – food deliveries, yoga online. Akhmatova outside the prison waited with women for news and the chance to send a loaf of bread, or a note, inside. These days some have it easy – food deliveries, yoga online. Still, Camus said the plague is within us, here to stay. I have learned about the lines of the Great Depression where hope envisions a loaf of bread, a note from inside. Camus wrote that the plague is within us, here to stay, as it has always done: waiting in line for a long time.
Copyright 2020 Bonnie Naradzay
“Lines” was originally posted on the blog – New Verse News – on April 25, 2020.
Bio:
Bonnie Naradzay’s poems have appeared most recently in American Journal of Poetry, New Letters (Pushcart nomination), Kenyon Review Online, RHINO, EPOCH, the Tampa Review, Tar River Poetry, New Verse News, Ekphrastic Review (http://www.ekphrastic.net/), and poems are slated to appear later this year in AGNI and elsewhere. In 2017 she graduated from St John’s College (the Graduate Institute), in Annapolis, Maryland. For many years she has led poetry workshops at a day shelter for the homeless (Miriam’s Kitchen) and at a retirement center, both in Washington, DC.
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Throughout June and July, we will be presenting on this web site work by poets and artists responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. We hope you will find these works relevant, comforting and inspiring as we all cope with the economic and health-related fallout.
Please consider donating to AFAC. If you do, let us know which poet or artist inspired you so we can send you a personal thank you.
Ah, those lines. I like the choice of the theme of your poem.