The Blue light of Hunger

        Blue lies hidden
        wrapped in layers of sky
        where community gathers.
        A constancy of call becomes morning
        offering a familiarity of longing.
        Shared aloneness,
        set in silhouette
        brokered by hummingbird’s flight
        saturates woodpecker’s echo.
        In this symphony,
        silence speaks.
        She sits in brutality
        beaten by blistering sun, ghosted and ghastly.
        Nothing but an old blue comforter
        between her
        and the earth’s hard misery,
        portioned to those
        placed deeply alone. She sits entirely still, not carried by life nor death,
        but deranged by a violence no one can name.
        Set in silhouette,
        brokered by unseeing eyes
        mourning calls,
        hanging onto forgotten elegies, now a distant echo,
        silenced by the burning sun of hunger.

THEME: Childhood Hunger

Pretend

It’s not the color of your skin
your look of fear
your baby with the sores
around her mouth
her vacant crusted eyes
flies hovering, the sour smell
of your breast milk
that chokes us.

No. We’re tapped out
we’ve given all we can
what about my own children
and saving for retirement?
There’s the dentist
the insurance,
and the cost of food so high.

It’s embarrassing
when our friends ask
where we’re going this year.
There’s no money for vacations.
See how shabby my coat is.
Twenty years we’ve had our car.

I gave to the food bank,
the fundraiser.
There’s no room in my house
for you.
It’s all we can do to keep
ourselves going,
what with job cuts coming.
It might be me next.

What if it’s me next?
I have to save.
Don’t look at me like that.
It will be me next.
You won’t be there.
There’re be no one to give me
a blanket, a place to sleep,
to hold me as I cry.

Go!
I have to get to the store,
finish this paperwork,
pull weeds,
anything but look at you.

Pray for me.

THEME: Childhood Hunger