Shrimp I didn’t know I was hungry. I liked peanut butter sandwiches. Rice was good, with Kool-Aid. So, everything was the same. I didn’t understand any differently. My father was a poor law student, my mom working at the Sizzler. There wasn’t enough money to spread through a month. What kept us fed, my mom said later, was the shrimp my uncle brought, covered in ice, in a red cooler. I don’t think we can repay him, despite our differences in opinions. He was a shrimper on the coast, as the seafood started to give out in the Gulf, as he settled down, and the food he provided me would later allow me to get seasick, fearful of falling off any boat, unable to swim like a shrimp. ![]() Donald Illich (Montgomery County, MD) has published poetry in journals such as Poet Lore, The Iowa Review, and Map Literary. He recently published a book, Chance Bodies (The Word Works, 2018).
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I Consider I consider-- I used to bring my infusion nurse chocolates because I dug the way Eli took care of the woman who vomited next to me. She was two decades younger with a mass of black curls we both knew she would lose. Her husband sat in the chair next to her, fidgeting with his backpack strap while she got sick. I knew how the poison made her veins taste like menthol and food taste like chewing bullets. I wanted to suggest plastic forks, but I left it to Eli, the nurse, to silently give my Cancer neighbor an extra pillow and ginger ale in a Styrofoam cup. I consider-- I am well now. Yesterday, I sucked down half a pound of shrimp and almost as many fried pickles. I stuffed my face with seafood and the South after sun and baseball and beer, and I couldn’t help but remember that, even when I was strapped in that chair hooked up to dripping venom, I knew that it would end. I would eat again. I consider-- When true hunger gnaws, with no respite, our stomachs shrink to walnut size, and our bodies reject sustenance even when it’s offered. Now, with a nation not well, with land fracked and skies fried, with fields of golden hair we all know we will lose, I consider. I shudder. Then the bile rises-- Again. ![]() Sally Toner is a high school English teacher who has lived in the Washington DC area for almost 25 years. Her work has appeared in Gargoyle Magazine, The Watershed Review, The Delmarva Review, and other publications. Through this soil, we connect Hard work, yes Good work, honest work but these hands are humble, too Planting and pulling food straight from the belly of the earth in the hopes that it goes on to fill other bellies in other places Perhaps even now hands that have never touched the soil are touching the earth through me as they lovingly embrace a fresh peach or pear or plum So too, do they embrace me. ![]() Reana Kovalcik lives and works in Washington DC, where she leads communications for a sustainable agriculture-focused organization. Reana is a lifelong lover of literature, writing, and poetry. Eat These Words Like your own mother She wants only Healthy children in school Bright eyes and brains The small farmer Sweat rolls from her face Pointed stick planting hoe weeding Food only if it rains The well is all day Every day 25 meters down rubber bucket For drinking washing cooking every thing Family needs water you know Rural electrification Brings green rice fields and income Time and pumps and spigots and vegetables Schools too sprout and grow Educating her daughters Feeding every child’s mind This woman smiles Like your own mother ![]() Paul Guenette (Montgomery County, MD) is a recently retired economic development manager with expertise in international agribusiness. Mr. Guenette designed and managed development programs in a career spanning 45 years and 90 countries. WISE CHILD Most of us, I think, aren’t doing our best. We don’t share goods, we do not trust. Except one eight year-old American girl whose parents came from Palestine, wrote a poem in school with this refrain: “Let the parents of your friend like your parents, and your parents like the parents of your friend.” May that verse be our mantra, breathed, printed for all to see in her charter school’s annual book of second-grade pupil’s poems. Pencil in her fingers, clarity of her truth in class, of San Francisco’s angelic youth! Who cares she does or doesn’t rhyme? Her words do mean to set the world aright: “Let parents of our friend like our parents, and let our parents like the parents of our friend.” May other pencils write as well to the heart of it. Listen to her; learn as in school, as from a great soul, like mahatma Gandhi, who said For hungry people, the only form in which God dare appear, is food. Learn from her as from the Reverend Martin King, Jr. who knew that anger is a species of fear, just an energy to fuel his army of ahimsa. Many of us are still angry. Much work waits to be done, as we swim separately in schools. Do you ken what I am keening about (Such selfishly gated greed, so heedless of injustice)? Our unfair land languishes for this girl’s banquet. Let earth be shared, hate cleaned from the slate. Every body of us hungry, might fight with fierce frown, Old alma mater keeps Fear’s flag a-flying. I’m just asking, some troubled citizens were wondering: Could we harbor that vision in our own warm bosoms? May we too, say: “Let parents of our friend like our parents, and let our parents like the parents of our friend.” ![]() Max Ochs (Anne Arundel County, MD) has spent over 60 years trying to write one decent poem. He has not yet succeeded, but along the way he has met met some amazing poets. HUNGER Two boys and a dog jumped the fence to steal an armful of apples. To tell it later, those long summer days were the best of their lives. Over the hills they rambled, jousting the sun, dreaming kingdoms in the corn. Talk of ships sailing for blue lands, where hunger never was, filled nights of stars ripe for the naming. Left to their own — father off somewhere, looking for work or a drink — mother home with sister and chickens that never laid enough eggs to keep a family going -- pantry nearly bare, two masonjars of tomatoes, half-sack of corn-meal, and a tin of tartar sauce. There was time and scarcely time to write in years what followed — how the old hound bayed her last, and broad seas claimed the younger brother, and how the lands beyond the blue held hunger enough. It stayed with him, that boy who grew from story to story, keeping the best parts, trying to make it all rhyme. ![]() W. Luther Jett (Montgomery County, MD) is a retired special educator. His poetry has been published in numerous journals as well as several anthologies. He is the author of two poetry chapbooks: “Not Quite: Poems Written in Search of My Father”, released by Finishing Line Press in 2015, and “Our Situation”, released by Prolific Press, 2018. Then and Now …we’re beginning,/each one beginning —Aaron R In the Eden of imagination, it is early evening… insects wheeze and buzz, glad for the cool, and a barefoot woman in a soft cotton dress walks lightly on damp grass. She’s in an orchard, and her hand reaches for the reddest apple. Its sweet juice and crunch explode joy in her mouth. There is no taste like this and no punishment, for it is all happening now and the orchard is real, planted on a vacant, city lot in the middle of our country by a woman named Countryman. It is a kind of Eden, where anyone can walk, pick pears, figs, apples, peaches, berries too, in their season—all free—and why not? asked poet Ross Gay, who joined this good work, while in other cities, communities are finding abandoned parks, forgotten school yards and, yes, they are planting orchards with the knowledge we were born to….knowledge we can eat. ![]() Patricia Gray (Washington, DC) writes fiction and poetry and teaches Creative Writing at The Writer's Center's downtown campus in Washington, DC. Her poetry collection, Rupture, was published by Red Hen Press. Comfort Food Lentils and barley, water and salt, split peas and pasta-- pure to a fault-- stir until clouded, season to taste, boil and then simmer, nothing to waste. Greens can be added. Time's on a loop. Towers have toppled into the soup. Cauldron of comfort served with warm hands, this is a recipe crisis demands. ![]() Author of Humor Me ( 2006) and chapbooks including Genetic Revisionism (2019), Claudia Gary (Loudoun County, VA) is also a health and science journalist. She teaches at The Writer’s Center (writer.org), FAES (FAES.org), and elsewhere. See pw.org/content/claudia_gary, @claudiagary. Then There Was No More I take the apple, bite into it as its flesh touches teeth-- the noise catches his attention turning, eye to eye I swallow slowly to hide my cache-- his eyes plead and I offer half of what is left, savoring his gift he nods in gratitude, then another hears the flesh touch his teeth-- eye to eye he offers half of his cache, the other nods in gratitude-- then another hears the savory chewing, but now there is no more to share ![]() Robert L. Giron (Arlington County, VA) is the author of five poetry collections and two award-winning anthologies. His poetry has been published in three recent anthologies, covering: gay poets, poets from around the world and Latino poets in the Washington, DC area. Finishing School Teach a man to fish And he will eat, Will stuff his face Like baked flounder, Full to bursting There are so many fish Teach a fish to man, To sprout stump legs To slither-crawl Suck air To hop-stand-run To sprout hair Thumbs To hunt, wage war To fish! And he will consume the planet. His scales will fall like coins, The cost of transformation But the scales will never fall from his eyes, And he will never again feel the fins That once propelled him In concert with his brethren Though skull be widened, He cannot be trusted For he is just a fish And it is unwise to teach A fish to man. 6 August 2019 ![]()
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PoemsThese poems were recognized at the 2019 WFD Poetry Competition ArchivesPoets
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