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Hunger Senryu no human flesh left myself cannibalism left teeth left two toes left  Robert Fleming lives in Lewes, DE, USA. He is a member of the Rehoboth Beach & Eastern Shore Writer’s Guild. In 2019, he was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award, as a contributor to the poetry anthology Stonewall Legacy. In 1983, he won a US national student journalism award for his review of a Duran Duran concert in the Brandeis University student newspaper The Justice.
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Ain’t no such thing as a free lunch On the picket line, we bring Daddy and the other teachers a bucket of KFC. There’s no line drawn in white across the blacktop like I expected there to be. Daddy stands with Mrs. Childers and Mr. Watson in jeans and T-shirts. The only one not looking funny out of dress clothes is Jerry, the Custodian, his coveralls still coated in dirt. Daddy says the school board is close to giving up and giving in, maybe one week more. It’s a good thing, too, he says softer, because it’s no fun playing poor. I don’t think he knows Mommy came with me last week to my school, stood in the hall with Mrs. Mulgrew as I took my seat in homeroom. Her head was bowed, lips pursed, like when our old Labrador was put to sleep. Now I spend mornings on my own line with the kids from public housing. Our eyes down, hands open, cheeks blazing, the rest of the school staring, whispering, knowing, we won’t eat today without our tokens. Click on the file below to listen to Lindsay read her poem: 
 Lindsay Barba is a grant writer by day, poetry writer by night. She is a lifelong Northeast Ohioan and resides in Akron with her cat, Bundesliga.
Not Him Let‘s walk among the crowds downtown, On an average morning, Hectic and harried, growing denser. Hurry along now, Past a doorman at a four-star hotel, Past a homeless man. A women arrives in a dark sedan. Every line screams privilege. Don’t step on his filthy blanket, Don’t look him in the eye, As the door man helps her, “This way, ma’am,” Handing her from the car. He puts her luggage on a cart, Calls for a bellhop, Runs interference as she scurries inside. Hide the truth; avert your eyes, Though we all share the same skies. The doorman glares, again, At this visible wreck of a man, Flips open his smart phone, Calls the non-emergency number, again. He has it on speed dial. Finished, he says, “C’mon man, give me a break.” The homeless man ignores him, (They’ve played this game before) Sitting in the sun, His back against the wall. The night’s chill still Has not left him And rich guilt has only Brought a couple of bucks, And change. Still not enough For a cup of coffee And a pack of cigarettes. Hide the truth; avert your eyes, Though we all share the same skies. Cigarettes still a gnawing hunger. Yet, she cannot smoke In her room, Not in this hotel, this city. Should she care That her craving is mirrored By a marginalized man, For the same purpose? Far from the same reason. She worries that she won’t Fit into her designer sheath tonight. He worries that he won’t Beg enough to eat tonight. And, at this moment, They both stay at the same hotel. Time to move, time to move, On the street for lack of love. The man stands and stretches, Flashes his gap-tooth smile at the doorman, Who ignores him. Gathering his things close, in ritual, The man carefully rolls his blanket, Stuffs it in his duffle. So small a place To contain a man’s world: Past and present, Hopes and heartaches, Dreams and disappointments, Vanished spirit, And the picture. Carefully wrapped and Near the top, Of her, Wavy long brown hair A twinkle in her eye, For him. How trite, he thinks, Yet true. If I lost my love Or she were taken, I would wander through my days Forsaken. Bereft of heart And reason I would walk down city streets, Looking for a sign, A laugh, a word A snatch of song. My face and my soul Withered, wrinkled, Unwashed, uncaring and untouched. The woman waits now In the lobby. She has changed Her blouse and shoes. A man enters, Italian suit and style. She smiles at him walking toward her. They embrace. As over his shoulder She sees the homeless man, Head down. Walking slowly Away. She pulls back and says something To the man she’s with. He pulls out his wallet, Hands her a bill, Then another, At her look, angry, wounded. She hurries then. The man says wait. Toward the door, solace, Heedless, Her high-heeled sandals Make it hard to run. Nevertheless, she Catches the man on the street. He stops, Hearing the sound of her heels. She takes his sleeve, tentative, Tugs, Presses the bills Into his hand, Turns away. “Thank you,” he says To her retreating back, And then looks. The money, A fifty and a twenty. “I can’t,” he starts to say, Turning around. If she heard him, She doesn’t show it. The sting of pride, Thought long forgotten Spurred him To reject a small fortune. His good fortune. He’s yet to lose his reason. Hard lessons taught him, He can’t eat pride. “Hey, lady,” he shouts, “Thank you.” She almost seems To miss a step. So swiftly, he’s uncertain And she continues on, Into the lobby, gone. He slowly turns, Continues walking, Stuffing the bills deep Into the pocket of his first shirt, The one deepest inside Of the four he wears. He shakes his head Then shuffles on. And both this woman and man, Both bewildered, Rich and poor, Will eat well this night. Only one Will sleep well. It will not be him. Click on the file below to listen to Philip read his poem:
 Philip Brent Harris is a poet, philosopher, satirist, essayist, fine artist, digital artist, and occasional photographer. He has a BA in Film Studies, with a screenwriting emphasis and has written over a dozen screenplays, some with his partner, Jasmina Bojic of Stanford University. After their partnership dissolved he had a five-year hiatus from writing. Shortly after he began oil painting, he still felt an itch he could not scratch. He felt compelled to respond to the Newtown shootings and wrote a satire modeled on Jonathon Swift’s A Modest Proposal, called An Immodest Proposal, purporting to advocate for universal gun ownership. After that, the damn broke and he has written constantly since then, much of it verse. This surprised him, since he thought it a form he had finished with in Junior High School. He has a novel under review at two major publishers and hopes to add the title author to his list.
A LITTLE BIT OF SHAME Hey you; stuck on the street, with not a care in the world Your hair all in knots and your nails long and curled I have pity for you and a little bit of shame So busy with my life, I don’t even know your name If you ask me for change, I might pull out my money I’ll hand over so little, it’s not even funny I am so healthy and strong and successful today I wonder what it’d take, for me to be your way If you were my child, so lonely and hopeless I would do all I could, to get you out from that mess But my children are successful and I’m doing just fine I guess I don’t have to worry, if the worry’s not mine… MUCH TOO BUSY EATING I’m enjoying a second helping and yet another drink My plate needs my attention, little time to stop and think We’ll be throwing out the leftovers; our fridge is overflowing So I’ll just keep on eating, even though my stomach’s showing Someone needs to finish it, it seems like such a waste So many different flavors, I’ve lost my sense of taste Here comes another spoonful, I just need to open wide The last one was kind of mushy; this one’s crunchy fried I should start a diet, when I empty out my pantry But there’s a stock of 40 days, I need to keep it handy I’m addicted to going shopping; I get there every day And the restaurant around the corner, has an excellent buffet It breaks my heart to think, that someone’s going hungry Living on the street, or from a weather ravaged country The food that I am wasting, could feed a family or two But I’m much too busy eating, so what am I to do Click on the file below to watch Don read one of his poems: 
 Don Hamaliuk, is a father and grandfather who lives in St. Albert, Alberta for seven months and in Mesa AZ for the winter months, with his wife Joan. He writes mostly about the humour in our daily lives. If you want to hear more send him an Email donhamaliuk@hotmail.com and check out his You tube videos Don Hamaliuk Don Hamaliuk 14 subscribers•19 videosFunny Entertaining Original.
World Food Day Oct 16, 2020... We hunger for things For freedom, respect...for peace Why is food on list Waking up hungry Surviving not living means Going to sleep hungry Hungry children cry Deafening is the clamor We choose not to hear Current tragedy Capacity but no will We could end hunger Wake up and listen Finding will will show the way We will end hunger  Written by A.G. Kawamura, a third generation fruit and vegetable farmer and former Secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture (2003 to 2010).
LEFTOVERS We do well. We feel safe. We will not live life off-target. Let us bow our heads, thankful for the fine-grained crust, the yielding inner crumb. The wine oaky, sweetened with song trilled on angel food tongues, we grow swollen as low-hanging fruit. Out on the street, fallen while no one was looking, the nameless siphon sustenance from their bones, hunched, rootless, left to sizzle in the skillet, so many futures fricasseed. Out on the street children spin despair’s fouled honey. All our à la mode speeches, our but for the grace quotes cannot atone for the bounty uneaten, tossed into dumpsters at end of day, our legislators pickling the batter. Out on the street a fairy godmother, hell-bent for butter. Unlike the fables– cold porridge, toxic apples, parents left with a sickly succotash of choice– she salvages second-day cuisine via cherry red hatchback. Hustles to rewrite stories, one underpass, one home delivery, one meal-sized biodegradable container at a time. First print: Sheila-Na-Gig  Kari Gunter-Seymour’s award-winning poetry collection is titled A Place So Deep Inside America It Can’t Be Seen (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions 2020). Her poems appear in numerous journals and publications including Verse Daily, Rattle, Main Street Rag and The LA Times. She is the founder/executive director of the Women of Appalachia Project and editor of the WOAP anthology series, Women Speak, volumes 1-6, a poetry workshop instructor, the 2020 Ohio Poet of the Year and Poet Laureate of Ohio. www.karigunterseymourpoet.com
Gleaning Lining up at the food bank, neighborly encounters. I drop off pancake mix, cold sausage, chocolate milk from our fundraiser, cancelled in Covid-time. Homeless men and women on downtown streets so long pantry workers greet them as friends in strange vicinity, not entirely strangers, not completely local. Housed locals enter quietly depart quickly or accept offers for door-step delivered meals. A woman not far mails surgical masks to her roofless brother by way of a local knowing his creekside camp. Is a mendicant holding a bowl on pilgrimage less hungry than a roofless man with family keeping distance? Finger-ping of the bowl is a bell, attention to the virtue of less. Roofless man is attended by his own practical credo. In Paris, passing a child holding out her hand to a crowd rushing up a Metro staircase, woman beside her weary. Wrong train, running back down deserted steps in time to catch the woman berate the empty child. Picking these words for thought, not work, leaves me wanting more, an eater of other courses and meals to give instead of memory. Lynn Axelrod is a community organizer in her home area, a northern California coastal village. She’s been a reporter for a weekly newspaper, an environmental NGO staffer, and an (early-retired) attorney. She has an undergraduate degree in literature, pursued graduate lit. coursework while teaching freshman courses, and has studied with several well-published poets. She continues reading literature, poetry, history, and current affairs. Her work has appeared in several journals, in print and online.
Picture from Somalia The eyes of a child who is starving to death have already died of expecting what never arrives. They hold a knowing language cannot shape. of what a wasting body tells. How shall I write of this beautiful boy when all I have is words? I look for something I could name as fear, fear of death, perhaps. But his has been a dying every day, as natural to him as breathing in and out. I can’t see hopelessness but maybe there was never hope to lose. If there is grief for what is not, it can’t be named, but maybe there has never been a plenty to regret. The rage that must be part of what consumes him hides. Perhaps it’s dammed behind the eyes gone dull with brute monotony of nothing to be done. I can’t see in. I cannot look away. I cannot look away although I’m sometimes hungry not to know.  Nan Meneely is a Connecticut poet whose career in teaching and training culminated in twenty years with the Federal Emergency Management Agency where she managed programs in support of disaster response and recovery. Her first publication, Letter from Italy, 1944, was noted by the Hartford Courant as one of thirteen important books by Connecticut writers in 2013. Her second book, Simple Absence, published hours before the pandemic reached American shores, was nominated for the National Book Award.
I Went Hungry Once when I spent all of my money on vintage earrings in New York City. It was a Sunday, Western Union was closed, so my dad couldn’t wire me any emergency cash. It was hard to recognize myself or the city that now taunted me-- the redolence of hot pretzels, peanuts, and gyros on every block now torture. Money oozing from limos and fancy threads mocking me in my misery, the distance unapproachable. And, later, in my dorm room, after the others went to bed, I felt like Jean Valjean, desperate and alone, raiding the shared fridge, a Tupperware container marked for someone else. Here is a video of Lisa reading the poem: 
 Lisa Lynn Biggar received her MFA in Fiction from Vermont College and is currently completing a short story cycle set on the eastern shore of Maryland. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous literary journals including Main Street Rag, Bluestem Magazine, The Minnesota Review, Kentucky Review, The Delmarva Review and Superstition Review. She’s the fiction editor for Little Patuxent Review and co-owns and operates a cut flower farm on the eastern shore of Maryland with her husband and three cats.
Gleaning Lining up at the food bank, neighborly encounters. I drop off pancake mix, cold sausage, chocolate milk from our fundraiser, cancelled in Covid-time. Homeless men and women on downtown streets so long pantry workers greet them as friends in strange vicinity, not entirely strangers, not completely local. Housed locals enter quietly depart quickly or accept offers for door-step delivered meals. A woman not far mails surgical masks to her roofless brother by way of a local knowing his creekside camp. Is a mendicant holding a bowl on pilgrimage less hungry than a roofless man with family keeping distance? Finger-ping of the bowl is a bell, attention to the virtue of less. Roofless man is attended by his own practical credo. In Paris, passing a child holding out her hand to a crowd rushing up a Metro staircase, woman beside her weary. Wrong train, running back down deserted steps in time to catch the woman berate the empty child. Picking these words for thought, not work, leaves me wanting more, an eater of other courses and meals to give instead of memory. Lynn Axelrod is a community organizer in her home area, a northern California coastal village. She’s been a reporter for a weekly newspaper, an environmental NGO staffer, and an (early-retired) attorney. She has an undergraduate degree in literature, pursued graduate lit. coursework while teaching freshman courses, and has studied with several well-published poets. She continues reading literature, poetry, history, and current affairs. Her work has appeared in several journals, in print and online.
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