Waking on the porch

Bar-Nadav seems to not write very cheery poetry. Its all quite depressing. "Waking on the Porch" seems to be about a miserable marriage. It seems like this woman is lonely though shes sitting across the breakfast table with her husband. In the first stanza it describes the place. In the second stanza it speaks of a man who she says might be her husband though she makes it as if she barely knows him. Hes screaming. In the third stanza she describes the mans voice in a deadly morbid way. The forth stanza it describes the empty conversation and bowl of milk. It describes the milk in the last stanza as "white as a funeral."

Bar-Nadav gives this poem a very dull sort of eerie tone. She uses words like "vacant" "dead" and "funeral," painting a broken home, a home that no matter whoever walks through the door it seems emptier then it was before. This woman seems to be speaking as if shes out of the scene. She seems numb and only witnessing it all.

The title is called "Waking on the Porch," because its as if the woman who is saying the poem has no idea how shes gotten herself to this place.