HUNGERS 
So many kinds--
for touch, relationships, acceptance,
fame, success, or just belonging.
Many stem at first
from thirst
for knowledge,
but none can be
achieved or even begun
when the real hunger
is an empty stomach
at school, at home--
singly or famine by the thousands.
No grain of truth
nourishes bloated stomachs of the starving.
Hunger pangs are not just a saying
to those whose stomachs rumble night and day.
So hard to address
necessary sustenance
despite the plenty—even waste–
in the world’s overall food chain.
One job lost, and home becomes the car or street.
Or perhaps one’s village was bombed or burned
because of differences in cultures or beliefs.
Whatever the cause, the despairing need is the same--
hunger ensues. With no fixed address for help,
each is lost in the cracks
if society lacks safety nets or networks.

​Comment
Mea Culpa

—for Stewart Brand at 80

The bank marquee reads 77 degrees at 6:22 a.m.
Skies are overcast except for slim breaks north and east.
A sparrow or wren walks for a quarter block in front of me,
I think to lead me away from a nest at its personal risk.
So much for humans' corner on altruism, the lack of which
does not quell but propagates hunger across the globe.

Oil-bought politicians be damned for heating the world
—and us for not voting them out of office with cars
run on solar power to underscore the EX in Exxon.
Meanwhile—and the while is ever mean to have-nots--
great swaths of Earth turn deserts, and rivers run dry
as ice caps melt and oceans rise, warm, and acidify.

Why can’t we commit our backs to the political plow
to alter the trajectory of the Clock of the Long Now?

Ed Zahniser has published six books of poetry, including Mall-hopping with the Great I AM and Confidence in Being and other poems (2018). He retired as senior writer and editor with the National Park Service Publications Group. He is poet laureate of Shepherdstown, WV.

Picture of Ed is a "photo posterization by Tom Taylor."

​This Ridiculous Struggle

​The yearning to pin the moth just so,
is the hungry ghost.
The dark of that unquenchable maw.
Monkey mind tells us we're stuck here.
 
Even as I bathe in the orange-y, pinkest sunset on my porch,
those children sit huddled
inside themselves.
Cold or hot, dirty, bored, dirty and of course hungry.
Both occur at the same time.
The sky is a marvelous wash of lingerie hues and mesa burning.
Each wrenched away baby
frenzied by so much absence.

​Julie lives in Freeland, MD and says, “I start, make & point out things. I wonder how we got here. I live on a "farm" and herd kids & pets & groan at hubby's puns, often.” 

Jeffrey Banks, poetically known as "Big Homey" has had opportunities for his artist activism as an advocate against homelessness recognized nationally through presentations at universities, conferences and churches. His work in this arena has been recognized by notable figures such as Dr. Cornel West, Tavis Smiley, Richard Gere and NBA All-Star Allan Houston. In 2019, his poetry was featured in the National Association of Poetry Therapy Annual Conference and published in their anthology.

Serve Rice in Everything
 
Poor, fuels the imagination,
allows us to make 5 children believe,
popcorn for dinner, 3 nights in a row, is a treat.
 
Hard-up pushes my sister to learn
15 ways to fix potatoes, and that
adding rice in everything makes it go further.
 
Broke drives a single mother’s
$40.00 car, which runs on gas
by the gallon and daily silent prayers.
 
Bad-off demands a space heater in only 1 room,
an open gas oven with nothing baking,
tattered quilts over multiple sleepers.
 
Penniless lives on the street corner hosting
the Viet Nam veteran, the crack addict, and the
lost one with a cardboard carton house.
 
Down-and-out dwells in an un-insulated, rented house
with mold so bad the cabinets can’t be used
and the shower cleaned before anyone gets in.
 
Poverty walks beside the woman with dreams
as rundown as the heels of her white,
$6.00 flats, sloshing through November sleet.

Hunger down the Block
  
Michelangelo kicked his Moses in the knee
to make him move.  A kick in an empty stomach
took me home everyday summers:
canned tuna fish, mashed potatoes.  I wished for
more but ate whatever was dished out. 
 
Satisfied, I bit my lip to see my playmates
wrapped against the afternoon, their pools of septic fate,
and grew to know their upsurge, stealing food --
the upshot of their munching mouths,
their slow desire for any edible, half-eaten food
‘down the hatch,’  their laugher -- imagining
lives that swallow trout and sauerkraut.  
 
I post small gifts, drop coins in outstretched hands,
relive the fear, reflect what turns my stomach.

William Rivera has three full-length books, and one chapbook, of poems: Buried in the Mind’s Backyard (Brickhouse Books, 2011): The Living Clock (a chapbook, Finishing Line Press, 2013); Noise (Broadkill River Press, 2015); and Café Select, with reproductions by Spanish/American artist, Miguel Conde (Poet’s Choice Publishing, 2016). In recent years, he has published in numerous literary magazines, including: Innisfree, Broadkill River Review, Raven’s Perch, The Broome Review, California Quarterly, Gargoyle, Recursive Angel, The Curator Magazine, Third Wednesday, Ghazal. Lit Undressed, Blazevox, The Pangolin Review, 2River Review, Loch Raven, Dual Coast Magazine, and others.

A Lady Yells Up and Down Minnesota Avenue I'm Hungry!
 
What does hunger look like?
I follow the steps of quiet children.
Their footprints weren't light or dancing.
Bare feet drag to an abyss of undernourishment.
Such big stomachs and tear-less crying,
This is what we have seen on television.
Staring at a world away we are deceived. 
By the perception of distance--
Hunger does not notice day or night.
It is the same a gray edge of pain unbroken.
The ailing wake slow and anguished,
To the daily promise of a starving nightmare,
Every sense of enjoyment is dull to life.
We work and drive and live in circles of luxury. 
The hungry world is not our fault.
The street corner looks are drug induced.
I can waste more money with fake charities.
We demand the freedom of un-involvement.
Justifying our apathy with cynicism, 
I indict myself more than I do you.
Emancipated hands of poverty's daughters,
Dig into earth looking for a heartbeat,
Of sustenance of nutrition gold,
To follow a garden line,
To a life line of full happiness,
With every kind of fruit and vegetable,
The rich soil of giving could offer up.
But the ground is tight and hard.
What is meat but imagination abounding.
The breath is a death stench most foul.
Babies are aware that they are dying.
They instinctively suckle at the air.
Wide eyes blinking, "Feed us!"
I ignore the lady yelling. I think she looks high.

(c) Brenda Bunting

Brenda Bunting is a socially conscious Poet, Author, Spoken Word Artist and Workshop Facilitator. She is the 2019 winner of the UUCS Jazz Poetry Slam in Sterling, VA and was most recently published in, “The Daily Abuse” Collection 2018. ​

WHO WE ARE
 
“The cry did knock/against
                        my very heart…”  The Tempest
 
When we do not feed the hungry children in Biafra
Looking at tourists, then we are the camera, staring.
If we do not take away their starvation, then
We are also the black marketeers who stole their food.
We are the karmic seeds of Viet Nam
Running ablaze with fire on our backs.
We’re the hummingbird flying the Atlantic in March.
We are Katrina because clothes were soaked, and when
There was no more food, when no help came,
We were the empty verbs.
These are the tears that come unbidden for Mozambique,
For starving children in the trees,
Waiting for rescue helicopters. All this,
When there were other possibilities.
Don’t you feel the heartbeat of the earth, the knob
We could turn? The magical tree we could put back in the rain forest?
Can you count the number of women sold to slavery we could wrap  
In warm cotton and bring back home? 
Riding an idea is like riding the wind
Unless we harness its lonely tumult, unless we give the fruits
Of the earth to open mouths and aching stomachs.
We are the rain on the cold hungry dog in the streets of Chile,
The disfigured man in prison, the mass deaths in Bosnia.
We are the shame of the soldier who thought he should
Die instead of his buddy. We are the broken clock of
The widows of war, their last dreams filled with absence.
If we are the ones who do not feed, comfort or save--
We are the grave.                                         

​Grace Cavalieri is Maryland's tenth Poet Laureate. She's founder/ producer of "The Poet and the Poem" on public radio ,celebrating 42 years on-air, now produced at the Library of Congress, .She's poetry columnist/reviewer for The Washington Independent Review Of Books.

Hunger
 
Imagine the hungry
gathering late into the night
at the dumpster                   
behind Food Lion,
harming no one 
                            
then wish for each one
the trash bin of Van Gogh,
or Picasso or Monet, 
the sketches and canvases
they threw away. 
 
 Michael S. Glaser
 
                   
 Passing By
 
He held out a cup
and I reached
for some coins.
 
He scowled. 
 
“I thought you wanted some bread,”
I said, certain he was going to ask
for more than this easy lint from my pocket.
 
I looked into his eyes and suddenly
felt ashamed that I lacked the courage 
to offer something his heart could chew on,
 
something from the warm oven
of my comfortable life, something
he might inhale deeply like oxygen,
some genuine bread for the journey –
each slice an offering
to sweeten his life again.
 
 Michael S. Glaser

Michael S. Glaser is a former Poet Laureate of Maryland from 2004 who has edited three anthologies of poetry, co-edited the Complete Poems of Lucille Clifton for BOA Editions, and published several award winning volumes of his own work, most recently, Threshold of Light with Bright Hill Publishing (2019).    More at www.michaelsglaser.com

Hunger
 
Hunger for that which ought to be,
hunger for the blade of heaven,
the hedge of corn, the field of wheat,
the hand that reaches out to give,
and plant, and share, the root, the seed
of fertile ground, and quiet soil,
the face of love and common grace.
 
Cliff Bernier

Author of three books and two CDs, Clifford Bernier is a member of the Washington Writer’s Collection and has appeared on NPR’s The Poet and the Poem from the Library of Congress.  He lives in Northern Virginia.  ​