War Doesn’t Want
 
War doesn't want to be
an arcade game, doesn't
want an enemy a blip
on the radar screen.
It doesn't want a victor
with the best eye-hand
coordination. It wants
the thrill of killing
at intimate range, wants
the torch, the stench
of singed flesh (the skin
tastes best). It hates
dining alone, making death
with strangers. It wants
to know what it's eating.

​Barbara Goldberg (Montgomery County, MD), poet, translator and essayist, is Series Editor of The Word Works’ International Edition’s.

DC Farmer’s Market
In the Land of Plenty, carrots congregate.
Dusty yellow and saffron sticks
call on Carotene to work its power to
the people, strolling aisles
of an urban farmer’s market.
Rows of verdant spinach sparkle
iron-rich, nestled next to nectarines.
Orange oracles ooze Vitamin C,
their citrus scent reminiscent of
Paradise.
In the Land of Plenty,
in this Paradise, this Fruitopia
I watch a hunched homeless woman
emptying her voluminous pockets
to find change for cherries.
Cherries gleam like garnets, these
round promises of summer.
The long-bearded farmer refuses her change.
Gently placing orbs of glistening,
rain-kissed fruit in her hands
he says,
“These are for you.”
She smiles beamingly
through toothless grin.
“Just be careful of the pits, ma’am.
And please come back next week.
We have plenty to share.”
In this Land of Plenty,
there are 800 million more people
to nourish with Earth’s bounty.
In this Land of Plenty,
we’ll grow goodness from seed. 

Rachel Carillo (Montgomery County, MD) is a Noodle Expert, poet, gig-economy writer, social and climate activist, share-economy denizen and public transportation devotee. With a Master's degree in International Studies, she has traveled extensively, lived bi-coastally and skied the Southwest as a Mountain Girl. She is currently on a search for home while writing her first novel.

Mother
Hunger stares at me
With those empty eyes,
Parched lips,
Protruding belly,
And the bigness of -
A world awry
Starvation hopes at me
With a bucket brimming with
The golden kernels of
A million dollar sunset
Offset by the rambling
Road to rescue
Death fills me
With endless knowing
Of another mother rocking
Her starving baby
One last time
To sleep

​An internationally recognized food justice leader and specialist, Liz Reitzig has recently presented her memory- and nature-infused poetry at readings throughout the County. She is a mother to five amazing children and lives in Prince George’s County, MD with her family.

​Fried Tomatoes
My mother didn’t drive a car and so
my father would leave her money for the week,
and she’d have to walk for groceries and couldn’t always manage,
but if an unexpected visitor dropped in
she always had tomatoes.
These would be fried and put on toast with cream sauce on top.
We always had milk and flour. Sometimes
Uncle Freddie came by on his bicycle after delivering   
things people ordered from stores, carried in his bike basket.
He was fifteen and saving money to be a lawyer.
He wore a tweed cap and woolen knickers.
Uncle Freddie died last week at a hundred and one.
If my mother was surprised by her brother,
she would fry up some tomatoes.
When I walked home from school for lunch
and she served them I knew she wasn’t able
to walk up to the store.
And today when I opened the refrigerator
after two weeks away, and just out of bed with the flu,
I saw two fat tomatoes alone on the shelf.
I always have tomatoes.
So, I’ll slice them in olive oil and salt until slightly burned on the edges
then scoop everything on two pieces of toast and
if I close my eyes, I’ll see a yellow kitchen
with squares of sun on the linoleum floor,
and my uncle, one last time grabbing his hat, and running out the door.

Grace Cavalieri (Anne Arundel County, MD) is Maryland's tenth poet laureate. She founded and still produces "The Poet and the Poem" for public radio, celebrating 43 years on-air. Her forthcoming book (2020) is What The Psychic Said. 

Under the Bridge
​
it must have been the summer of 1955
in Fukuoka, Japan.  I was just six.
my father was the American consul in the city.
my mother was taking me with her
on her morning rounds.  our last call
at noon was to a deserted area
in a part of the city unfamiliar to me.
we parked off the road in a dirt lot
and walked down a crooked path
to the edge of a small river.
there was broken concrete lying around
in the glaring hot sun.  I asked
my mother what we were doing.  She said
we were visiting someone she knew
who lived under the bridge.
 
we got down into the shade
under the bridge.  my mother called.
she walked around and called some more.
she was in a summer dress and proper
shoes.  She was calling out in Japanese.
she turned to me and said in English:
“they must be out.”  we could see some clothes
lying in heaps and pans and stuff
in a makeshift area under the bridge.
 
as we were leaving, my mother put down
a see-through plastic bag of hard candy,
the kind you suck and crack your teeth on.
she left the candy by one of the pans.
we made our way back up the river bank
up to the car and drove off
into our life full of food and things to do.
the consul’s wife could not solve their hunger
but she could leave a little bit of sweetness
and, at the same time, teach her son
that not everyone had enough to eat. 

Q.R.Quasar (aka David Martin ) is a poet, playwright, novelist & scholar/translator of Arabic & Persian poetry & philosophy (Ph.D., UCLA). His books are available from Global Scholarly Publications
(www.gsp-books.org.): Watching the Universe Die, The Universe in Bloom, Ocean of Suns, Buddha Time, etc. Q.R.Quasar lives in Montgomery County, MD. 

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).
​

​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.