Hadara Bar-Nadav
Close Your Eyes to Catch a Ghost
I carry my dead
under my eyelids
who yawn and pull out
my stitches, who yawn
and sing to my teeth.
One night of shivering,
another of sweat. They beat
my ear canals like a bell
and whisper along the length
of my neck. One chanting
Hebrew cries out 1/8 and 2/3
and this is an alphabet,
a blessing in gibberish,
language deranged by shadows
and wings. Goodnight I reply
though I am alone and they
are full of tricks. I forgive
the dead and let them reign--
now that they are dead
they will never know sleep.
One Need Not Be a House
Each doorway, doorless. Each window, sprung. The living room with its singing nails, the chimney with its crumbling mouth of ash. Who sits in each chair, who sighs on the porch, who collects dust on his tongue, waiting? Whose shirt is a shadow the curtain makes? The days unravel us. Say it plainly: to be alive is to be Haunted; to be dead is to watch. Who calls your name? We do. Who whispers into your mouth? We do, we do. Father, mother, child, we do. A seat for you at our table.
[Note: Italics are quoted from Emily Dickinson.]
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Hadara Bar-Nadav is the author of two collections of poetry, A Glass of Milk to Kiss Goodnight (Margie/Intuit House, 2007), which was awarded the Margie Book Prize, and The Frame Called Ruin (forthcoming from New Issues, 2012). Her chapbook, Show Me Yours (Laurel Review/ GreenTower Press 2010), was awarded the 2009 Midwest Poets Series Award. Recent publications appear or are forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and other journals.
She is co-author, with Michelle Boisseau, of Writing Poems, 8th edition (forthcoming from Pearson/Longman, 2011) and is currently an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.