SNAP

Sometimes, I still remember, the despair in your eyes,
As we lined up in the checkout line,
Nine boxes of hamburger helper,
I think I’m too pretty to have to eat.
So I sit at the table and pretend to maneuver around my plate,
Thinking one day, I’ll sit in beautiful restaurants with pretty black plates,
And he’ll tell me I can order whatever I want...
Mcdonald’s a late night drunk stop,
Not an thirty-five minute walk,
Once a month, as a “treat” in a South Texas parking lot.
Minimum wage is three dollars, so we dig for quarters in corners of couches,
For the black bags of laundry we load into grocery carts,
To walk thirty five minutes, across from the Once A Month Mcdonalds,
And then walk our clean clothes, back in black bags and grey carts,
Sweating up and down hills through Los Angeles heights,
Clothes we just washed, sweating among their own socks.
The four of us live on Lone Star, SNAP in other states,
It’s hardly enough, for older brother in football.
Eldest daughter in swim.
Jars of .95 cent Ragus and .50 cent spaghetti noodles,
Topped with American cheese, made in bulk.
And the girl in me just wants to snap,
Watching her try to even entertain Thanksgiving.
So I eat extra at school and friends houses.
Twenty years later, just me,
I still pray and near cry in grocery lines,
Even though I know my card won’t decline.

BIO: Jess is a Mexican American writer and human rights activist from South Texas. She has been published by the International Human Rights Art Movement, Writers Resist, Missing Perspectives and Dissent Voices. She is nominated for a PEN Robert Dau and Pushcart Short Story Prize. Her work focus on intergenerational trauma, reconciliation through narrative power and Mexican American experience in America.

The Day Six Hundred Eighty Five Thousand Boxes of Plumpy’Nut -- Paid For -- Expire*

“A starving child on the brink of death can be brought back with a specialty peanut paste,
Plumpy’Nut, costing just $1 a day.” Nicholas Kristof

The hot afternoon spills its entrails
onto the macadam.

In our yard the whitetails I love despite their appetite
forage through my blue stars like teenagers at a buffet.

Above the cracked stone birdbath,
sparrows scounge.

You replace the propane tank.
I handi-wipe pollen off the porch table.

At the local high school graduation, empty folding chairs
stand in for proud immigrant parents.

A billionaire rents Venice for his wedding feast.
Workers pave over the White House Rose Garden.

A lawn mower drones. We shut the windows,
run the A/C 24/7. Like it or not,

the noise boomerangs,
follows us into the house,

where we order furniture from Wayfair,
track our heart rates, cycles, the news.

A crane pries the letters off the building
where USAID used to administer aid programs.

The flatware rattles. We wait our turn to speak.
Our humanity forks us; we are a university of dunces.

We crave carbohydrates.
The clock clocks us.

An ice cream truck jingles.
No children appear.

​Like it or not, we are tethered. The buck
turns his hindquarters to us

in full view of invisible children, who proceed to fade away--
Starving for $1 of Plumpy’Nut each.

THEME: Childhood Hunger

The Strawberries

We gorge ourselves on summer fruit,
The deep red strawberries dripping
Juice down our hands
As I open a text, see
A photograph from hell.
I push my dinner aside--
Warm tortillas filled with beans, rice, salsa,
Fresh lettuce, chopped tomatoes, sliced avocado
That could feed four people. Stare
At the cold glass filled with lemonade.
Instead of eating, I want to fast
For the skeletons on the front page
Of The New York Times--
Children, babies.
No food, no water, no aid.
No end to misery.
Too late.
Drops of water on tongues
Too late.
Morsels of bread
Too late. 
Mankind  
Too late.
We’ve had 300,000 years
To learn to care.
I fast, praying for food,
Water, medicine
As if it’s not
Too late while a mother watches
Her child, shot when reaching for food,
Die in her arms.
Blood drips down her hands.
Our hands.

THEME: Childhood Hunger