<![CDATA[Poetry X Hunger - Hunger Poems]]>

<![CDATA[Poetry X Hunger - Hunger Poems]]>Mon, 06 Apr 2026 20:39:01 -0400Weebly<![CDATA[Poem by Hiram Larew]]>Mon, 16 Mar 2026 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.poetryxhunger.com/hunger-poems/poem-by-hiram-larew

Why the Difference Café
Brunch Menu

We proudly use locally available ingredients. Prices may vary.

*** Starts ***
Fried Calamari with Peppered Remoulade
or
Salt Crackers, Lightly Crumbled

*** Mains ***
Steak Tartare with Couscous and Scallion Tapenade
or
Peanut Butter on Bread

*** Accompaniments ***
Haricot Verts with Toasted Coconut Flakes
or
Slice, American Cheese

*** Sweets ***
Glazed Seasonal Berries with Pistachio Macaroons
or
Chewing Gum

*** Beverages ***
Cinnamon Mocha Latte with Soy
or
Tap Water

THEME: Stark differences in food availability.

BIO: Hiram Larew founded the informal Poetry X Hunger initiative in 2017 as a way to bring two areas of interest – poetry and hunger prevention – together. Upon retiring from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where he helped guide international agriculture programs, he noticed that relatively little poetry about hunger was available. Believing in the power of poetry to touch hearts and minds, he launched Poetry X Hunger as a way to encourage poets to write about hunger.

]]><![CDATA[Poem by Karen Marker]]>Sun, 22 Feb 2026 05:00:00 GMThttps://www.poetryxhunger.com/hunger-poems/poem-by-karen-markerHunger
- After the announcement of USAID cuts

Smell the food left in the harbor to rot.
Even the frozen fast food.
The sugar bits and bones
they’ve thrown out
at the end of their dinners.

The starving starts in the pit
of your stomach, moves
to your heart.

After you’d finally tasted artichokes,
yogurt with the fat on the top,
eaten real sun ripened tomatoes.

After you’d peeled the onions,
cut them up without crying,
added them to a pot of stew
with so much left over
you could feed the world

how did this happen?

THEME: World Hunger

Karen Marker, an Oakland, California poet and a retired school psychologist whose writing has appeared in numerous anthologies and literary journals, including The MacGuffin, The Monterey Poetry Review, Slant, a Wordpeace, and New Verse News. Her first book of flash memoir/ poetry, Beneath the Blue Umbrella, was published by Finishing Line Press. You can find out more about her and her upcoming projects on her website. https://www.karenmarker.com/

]]><![CDATA[Poem by Emily Vargas-Baron]]>Tue, 06 Jan 2026 05:00:00 GMThttps://www.poetryxhunger.com/hunger-poems/poem-by-emily-vargas-baron2017190Eighty Years Ago: The Passing

“Mama, you are crying!
Why are you crying?
Why?”

“Our neighbors with white hair
Who loved you so…
Who played with you…”
“Yes, Mama, let’s visit them.”

“They were found today.
They were not moving.
They were holding each other.”
“What happened, Mama?”

“They had no food.
They were very proud.
No one knew!”
“Can’t they play with me, Mama?”

“I am so sorry, my little one.
They cannot hug you anymore.
They cannot play with you ever again.
Remember them, always.”
And so, all my long life,
I have remembered them
And I miss them…

THEME: Elder Hunger

BIO: Emily is a “closet poet” who only writes poetry when she cannot put her thoughts into any other form, and she rarely publishes her poems. She began writing poetry as a child alongside her father, who was a noted professor of romance languages and literature. He bred in her a life-long love of poetry, the mathematics of poetry, and the music of poetry—that after all—are ultimately one and the same. This poem relates an experience of her childhood that haunts her to this day.

]]><![CDATA[Poem by Esha Kannan]]>Wed, 17 Dec 2025 05:00:00 GMThttps://www.poetryxhunger.com/hunger-poems/poem-by-esha-kannanIgnored and Unfed

I seriously do not know
What is wrong with me?
In my opinion
A normal internalization
And this is not called overdramatic
Despite what most say
Because I am deaf
But not enough to realize
How others truly perceive me
With blatant ignorance
Or an obsessive relentlessness
To supersede me
As much as possible
Reactions usually go
One way or the other
And so it is unfortunate
That we cannot seem to coexist
Since we forget about our similarities
For example, we speak
I have a voice
One so obnoxiously loud
That it could be easily mistaken
For a thunderstorm
But with a human tune
With less intention to bring havoc
And instead more motivation
To advocate for myself
It is necessary
Because without my mother
How do I trust that
anyone else knows me
For me?
She is the only person
Who sees my potential
And sees that I am
The whole package
As an individual who can
Provide sweet banter
And thoughtful advice
And a timeless
Sense of humor
I am able to
Provide all of this
Even with a disability
To me
Speaking is living
To at least try
And put myself out
In a world where
I cannot easily belong in
Where being a piece
Of an incredibly tiny minority
Has its downsides of invisibility
Due to this
One problem I persistently have
On a daily basis
Is hunger
My plan for communication
Almost backfires
Since asking for meals
Takes me
An unreasonable amount of effort
I am used to food insecurity
But that does not mean
I should accept it without complaint
Whenever at restaurants
I am sure to wail like a lengthy siren
To communicate an emergency
Of my stomach continuously grumbling
Like a dormant volcano
Soon to erupt
If left unsatisfied
Most waiters do this
Because that are unfamiliar
With sign language
Which leaves them
To depend upon others
To face me instead
But there is only so many individuals
Involved in what seems to be
Family-owned food businesses
Along my home street
That any request of mine
Never gets fulfilled
No lunch break between work
Seems worth it
No ridiculously bright red Marinara sauce
To top a bowl of spiced spaghetti strands
Or a neatly baked, but slightly charred
Flatbread with hummus and pesto
Which is still a scrumptious feast
There is nothing much for me
Which is why I must suffice
With whatever is left in the office vending machine
A few sugary, chocolately, and sometimes stale
Energy bars are what I seek every afternoon
Which is sustainable calorie-wise
but these lack the nutrition value
To maintain strength throughout the day
And keep focus at a high
Food accessibility is also difficult
At grocery stores
Transactions at the check-out line are awkward
And most of the time
The clerks lack the decency
To even attempt and translate a message
Using a black-ink pen and notepad
That I am short in the cash
Needed to pay for what I want
This means I must drop everything
And come back another day
Maybe I will be lucky then
But these type of interactions have repeated
And so I remain unhopeful
Of my ability to secure
Even a sliver of a chicken thigh
Or a plastic bag
Of a few tomatoes and cucumbers
Searching through my kitchen fridge
At hours on end
Is what my weekday evenings are about
And it will remain this way
If no one is willing to change
And empathize with those
Who need food and a decent meal
Just as much as anyone else
I seriously do not know
What is wrong with me?
In my opinion
A normal internalization
And this is not called overdramatic
Despite what most say
Because I am deaf
But not enough to realize
How others truly perceive me
With blatant ignorance
Or an obsessive relentlessness
To supersede me
As much as possible
Reactions usually go
One way or the other
And so it is unfortunate
That we cannot seem to coexist
Since we forget about our similarities
For example, we speak
I have a voice
One so obnoxiously loud
That it could be easily mistaken
For a thunderstorm
But with a human tune
With less intention to bring havoc
And instead more motivation
To advocate for myself
It is necessary
Because without my mother
How do I trust that
anyone else knows me
For me?
She is the only person
Who sees my potential
And sees that I am
The whole package
As an individual who can
Provide sweet banter
And thoughtful advice
And a timeless
Sense of humor
I am able to
Provide all of this
Even with a disability
To me
Speaking is living
To at least try
And put myself out
In a world where
I cannot easily belong in
Where being a piece
Of an incredibly tiny minority
Has its downsides of invisibility
Due to this
One problem I persistently have
On a daily basis
Is hunger
My plan for communication
Almost backfires
Since asking for meals
Takes me
An unreasonable amount of effort
I am used to food insecurity
But that does not mean
I should accept it without complaint
Whenever at restaurants
I am sure to wail like a lengthy siren
To communicate an emergency
Of my stomach continuously grumbling
Like a dormant volcano
Soon to erupt
If left unsatisfied
Most waiters do this
Because that are unfamiliar
With sign language
Which leaves them
To depend upon others
To face me instead
But there is only so many individuals
Involved in what seems to be
Family-owned food businesses
Along my home street
That any request of mine
Never gets fulfilled
No lunch break between work
Seems worth it
No ridiculously bright red Marinara sauce
To top a bowl of spiced spaghetti strands
Or a neatly baked, but slightly charred
Flatbread with hummus and pesto
Which is still a scrumptious feast
There is nothing much for me
Which is why I must suffice
With whatever is left in the office vending machine
A few sugary, chocolately, and sometimes stale
Energy bars are what I seek every afternoon
Which is sustainable calorie-wise
but these lack the nutrition value
To maintain strength throughout the day
And keep focus at a high
Food accessibility is also difficult
At grocery stores
Transactions at the check-out line are awkward
And most of the time
The clerks lack the decency
To even attempt and translate a message
Using a black-ink pen and notepad
That I am short in the cash
Needed to pay for what I want
This means I must drop everything
And come back another day
Maybe I will be lucky then
But these type of interactions have repeated
And so I remain unhopeful
Of my ability to secure
Even a sliver of a chicken thigh
Or a plastic bag
Of a few tomatoes and cucumbers
Searching through my kitchen fridge
At hours on end
Is what my weekday evenings are about
And it will remain this way
If no one is willing to change
And empathize with those
Who need food and a decent meal
Just as much as anyone else

BIO: Esha Kannan is a freshman at the University of California at Davis who is studying data science and passionate about advocating for underrepresented groups, especially neurodivergent individuals. She enjoys creative writing and she been recently into poetry as a way of self-expression and communication about issues she cares about most. In her free time, she loves going out in nature, meeting new people, and playing sports such as volleyball and ultimate frisbee.

]]><![CDATA[Poem by Chivas Sandage]]>Mon, 28 Jul 2025 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.poetryxhunger.com/hunger-poems/poem-by-chivas-sandageHow To Distract
"about my grandma's village in the West Bank, it's been torched and olive and almond trees cut down these past few weeks…” —Naomi Shihab Nye on Facebook

1
A hard rain stripped the tender
New azalea blooms
Now a pale pink skirt
Flattened on the ground.

All I can think--
The three-year-old girl
Wearing a pink dress.
Blown in half.

2
Captive, I watch the massacre
Like all of us, day after year
After years, yet still feel a glimmer
Of some small, hopeless
Hope for peace before--
Before all the mass graves of barely shrouded skeletons overflow.
And children, like a small galaxy of stars, sleep under rubble.
All that light—buried.

You, old friend, say the word is war.
I say what I see—massacre. You
Say I don’t know what I see;
I’ve not read enough history.
But what do women and small children
Have to do with history. Or Mass
Killing. Mass atrocity. Ethnic
Cleansing, genocide,
Crimes against humanity. Apocalypse.
Then you support Hamas, you say. Nausea
Like gravity all day, seeing
Severed breasts tossed
Like bloody rubber toys
From man to man
Laughing, as she dies.

3
They torched her grandmother’s village
She says, olive and almond trees
Cut down these past few weeks
While you and I argued
Legal definitions and debated
Back to the Canaanites and a headline
Read “How to Distract a Starving Child.”

It’s the cheapest way to kill.
The human heart shrinks. A muscle
The body eats. You and I
Claim, explain, accuse, defend
While our hands smudge
Blood on everything we touch
And children are forced
To eat their own hearts.

This poem is from Chivas' completed manuscript of a second collection, Summertime in America, which features two groups of poems about the Israel-Hamas war. These poems strive to fathom the lived experiences of Israeli and Palestinian women. They also aim to eclipse politics, amplify multiple perspectives, avoid retraumatization in the telling, and speak to the unspeakable.

Chivas Sandage’s poems have appeared in the Texas Observer, Salmagundi, Southern Humanities Review, Soundings East, and The Long Now, among others. Her work won second place in the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 2022 Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Contest. Sandage won the 2021 Claire Keyes Poetry Award for a group of eight poems. Her poetry column, Ms. Muse, has appeared in Ms. Magazine. Her first book, Hidden Drive (Antrim House), was a finalist for the Foreword Book of the Year Award in poetry.

]]><![CDATA[Poem by Ann Tweedy]]>Wed, 23 Jul 2025 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.poetryxhunger.com/hunger-poems/poem-by-ann-tweedyOn Receiving an Email Forward Containing Kevin Carter's Pulitzer Prize Winning Photograph and a Plea for Gratitude

are gratitude and hunger linked?
would the focus and faithfulness
of a monk who thanks god
with every breath
relieve starvation? and is such thankfulness
possible in this sphere of excess? perhaps
i should deprive myself
to achieve constant gratitude, because
even the memory of hunger, mild though
it was--like the third-grade day i went
to the school nurse, my stomach an ache
of emptiness--does little for the woman
who never has to worry if she forgets
her microwave lunch, her office flanked
by restaurants, her credit cards
eager to stand in for a depleted atm.

of course going to the nurse for hunger
is a luxury, knowing this you know
the child knew the hunger wouldn’t last–
believed, at least back then, in the system.
so you know the girl was lucky, but even
still . . . . if i drew a picture of that girl--
her belly aching--every morning before
i left the house, sketching in the kids at school calling
her anorexic, laughing, if i said ‘thank you god
for this food’ before i took a bite of anything,
the way some people do, would the famine-stricken
countries prosper? would any person
live a single minute longer, would
one child’s ascites begin to heal?

the boy in Kevin Carter’s picture did not suffer
from our lack of gratitude. some other sickness
weakened him for the vulture’s pleasure.
i won’t disclaim my part in it or pretend to know
its name. and when Carter killed
himself three months later, that wasn’t lack of gratitude
either, though some might call it that.
even if i understood in the midst of the traffic jam,
the flu, the break-up, how lucky i am, what could
i possibly make of it except that the world is unfair?
and wouldn’t it be odd to thank anyone for such deplorable excess?

This poem was previously published in Knock Journal.

Ann Tweedy's full-length book, The Body's Alphabet, earned a Bisexual Book Award and was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. She has three chapbooks: Beleaguered Oases, White Out, and A Registry of Survival. Ann has been nominated three times for Pushcart Prizes and five times for Best of the Net Awards. As her day job, she serves as a law professor.

]]><![CDATA[Poem by Mary Meriam]]>Sun, 15 Jun 2025 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.poetryxhunger.com/hunger-poems/poem-by-mary-meriamHunger

I was born in the City of Dead
and died in the River of Children.
I am the infant smashed on the wall.
The kitchen is verboten!
The killers are insatiable for kalashnikovs.
Peshmerga, blood chief, my father.
Gulag, my mother, dirt soup.
I am yellow fever’s young boy
run wild in poppy fields,
scorched. My broken finger,
am I to blame? My little cowlick?

Mary Meriam studied poetry at Columbia University (MFA) and Bennington College (BA). She works as an editor and publisher of lesbian poetry and art, and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Arkansas. Her most recent poetry collection is Pools of June (Exot Books, 2022). Her poems have appeared in Literary Imagination, Literary Matters, Poetry, Post Road, Prelude, Rattle, Subtropics, and The Poetry Review.

]]><![CDATA[Poem by Sistah Joy Alford]]>Tue, 03 Jun 2025 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.poetryxhunger.com/hunger-poems/poem-by-sistah-joy-alford

The Truculent Visitor
© 7/1/2022, J. Joy “Sistah Joy” Matthews Alford

He paid me a visit again today.
Didn’t knock on the door
Or ring the bell.

Just came right in.
Made himself at home.
I tried to extend the courtesy of politeness

Despite his rude rumbling sounds.
Asked if he had someplace else he needed to be.
Surely he could see my fine table setting.

I had plans …was expecting guests.
But he, who had no use for such fantasies,
Reached up, snatched my delicate doilies

And linen napkins right off the table.
Threw my fine china to the floor,
Then reached deep inside me.

Grabbed and twisted my gut
Filling me with searing pain
No living soul should ever have to know.

So here I sit on the floor
Between shards of shattered plates
Scattered beneath my trashed dining room table.

I glance into my kitchen at once-filled pantry shelves
And eye the equally empty refrigerator
While squeezing my arms around my grumbling waist.

Tears stream down my face
As I try to comprehend
How this has become my reality.

Sistah Joy is the Prince George's County, Maryland Poet Laureate Emerita (2018-2023), and president of the Ebenezer A.M.E. Church Poetry Ministry in Fort Washington, Maryland. She has authored three collections of poetry and has served as Producer and Host of the cable TV show, Sojourn with Words, since 2005.

]]><![CDATA[Poem by Diane Murray Ward]]>Tue, 27 May 2025 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.poetryxhunger.com/hunger-poems/poem-by-diane-murray-wardMarrow

When headaches plague, and threaten teetering blindness
I either acknowledge pollen the culprit or promise to clean filters for
I am intimately familiar with being too tired to dust.

When a roaring sound overtakes my ears and everyone nearby hears
I either acknowledge or look straight ahead for
I am intimately familiar with its source.

When limbs seem to fumble , and my mobility’s challenged function is
noticed
I either acknowledge tripping or pretend that “muscles fell asleep” for
I am intimately familiar with its cause.

When irritability rages and becomes my response to a callus world
I either acknowledge your intentional ignorance of my circumstance or
swallow excuses that your center stage is fully booked for
I am intimately familiar with such scheduling.

When I can’t make enough saliva to taste “What’s That Soup?”
I either acknowledge that the weather isn’t numbing cold or I haven’t
enough self-generated heat to ward off diseases I am more susceptible to
succumb to
I am intimately familiar with such gnawing

When sleep disallows dreaming and screaming hasn’t any strength
because knowledge of diminishing reserves rarely has an outlet.
When sound becomes bold and my knocking knees can’t my body hold.

When you know I need yet withhold, I taste the marrow of my bones.
DMW
Fiction, thank God.

BIO: Diane is a New Yorker of West Indian heritage—a former dancer, choreographer, and radio blog talk host. She is TESORO; visit the gallery artist/poet page at: www.firesingers.com.

]]><![CDATA[Poem by Mona Zamfirescu]]>Fri, 23 May 2025 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.poetryxhunger.com/hunger-poems/poem-by-mona-zamfirescuSUMMER

end of June, every year, our dining table was fragrant,
wet, on old newspapers a litter of linden flowers
the tea is soothing to the nerves, we were told
to ward off colds in the winter, for us kids
no one read the news those days...

promised for a future time,
in the kitchen, under mountains of sugar
sweet peaches boil the summer away.
on counters rows of empty jars, glistening clean
like winters, barren and harsh those days...

my grandfather’s tree was laden with red glory
its canopy opened wide over the neighbor’s yard
I’d climb and reach over the fence,
a scrawny kid along the rough bark.
I cherished that harsh embrace, no tomorrow
on the heavy branches, just me sharing the boon
my little brother doubtful, looking up,
his smile dripping cherries those days...

before the cold set in, every day,
we would make the line in the vegetable market
back then, each kid counted at food lines,
our makeshift cart waiting for us around the corner
us kids full of questions
why potatoes, why now
what will we say
is it 10 kg for 20 lei, or is it 20 kg for 10 lei
why do we have to whisper
why do we have to run
why are they chasing us

linden trees still line our street
the years gone, the summers,
those days... promised away

Romania, 80’s

Mona is a professor of mathematics who has discovered her passion for poetry late in life. Currently she is enrolled in a MFA program in Creative Writing at CCNY-CUNY.

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