Four poems by
Anna Monardo
My Day
It’s all a big to-do. Today,
pay bills, pay self, do
homework for the child. Inside
me, who wants all this
done? Not me. I want
sleep and resurrection. I want
this room cleaned. Now. Mop
it. Stop what you’re doing, empty
the curio shelves, delve
in with fists. Force out
papers, known news you can
tear and toss; turn
it over to God where he lives
in the dumpster down the street.
Recovery
is this thing, not that
it matters how long you work
the system will find you, as birds
find glass doors. Take a step, then
another. At least try. Again, lift
your foot, galloping hoof,
harsh mane, sleek willow
tree of your sadness.
Omaha Origami
Ambitious cherry blossom,
diplomat governing
our neighborhood, intersection
of decision and doubt, hosta
unfurling, pink petal rain, napkins
of dogwood blooms soiling the lawn.
Is There Someone
You are tide and sea, the fish
and float of debris, the brisket,
banquet and bouquet, baguettes
you nibbled from the stroller
on Paris streets, the rolling wheels on French cement, cast you
in the film-noir opulence of some
memories you know and don’t know,
remember and never knew. Every morning
I must recall how it is: My mother,
alive, still with us, coming to dinner
tonight, in need of doctor, or is she
gone? And my father? Is there someone
I need to call or just pray for, pray
to, pray?
Anna Monardo’s novels, The Courtyard of Dreams and Falling In Love with Natassia, were published by Doubleday. Her memoir of her family’s immigration, “After Italy: A Memoir of Arranged Marriage,” winner of Creative Nonfiction’s Writing Pittsburgh Book Prize, has been excerpted in Creative Nonfiction, Hotel Amerika, Cimarron Review, More, and Fourth Genre. She teaches in the Writer’s Workshop of the University of Nebraska at Omaha..