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At Pat’s Farms At a time in our life we’d rather forget, a happening we will never forget. Late afternoon, we hover over racks Reduced for Quick Sale, ripe and ready produce, pray we find vegetables, salad fixings, maybe fruit for dessert if there is any. We find a cello-wrapped pack of cucumbers we can slice tonight and soft tomatoes I can make a hearty sauce for over our plain pasta. Our meager finds held in grateful hands, we stand on line behind shopping carts opulent with clear bags of lush berries, fresh veggies, and exotic fruits from aisles we don’t venture down. The total is $2.17; we’re ready with two singles, a dime, nickel, and two pennies. The cashier smiles, packs our dinner into a handled bag and says, “It’s paid.” We hold our our open palms with the money, stutter “But — .” She waves over her shoulder that the woman on line ahead of us who just left paid our bill. “Have a nice day,” patting my hand as she passes me the bag. We talk about it all the way home, still remarking these dozen years later when life has almost righted itself, feeding us with thankful blessings, we revel in how amazing it was, never sharing the story, still wondering how did she know? -- Backyard Farmer Sustainability has us tilling soil, adding amendments, peat moss, earth-friendly fertilizer, and has us researching to grow our own veggies. We attend a garden seminar, learn that peppermint plants will keep the family of bunnies living under our deck from munching on our crops. Broccoli. I never thought to plant it, didn’t buy it yesterday from the fruit stand because it didn’t look healthy, that not-so-good green I often see and call pesticide green. We can get three crops from just one plant, enough for the season. Strawberries – he shows us a verdant pot, tiny buds set, tells us to expect a bountiful crop of about 40 berries per plant. This will be a deck pot that will travel inside – expect berries for Thanksgiving and Christmas and snow day mugs full of berries delivered to blizzard shut-in neighbors in need of sweet berry smiles. Next, Romaine lettuce growing broad lime-green leaves already, plant now in cool temperatures, no fertilizer, let it grow. Next, spinach. None for me. I’ll plant it in a part of the garden without peppermint plants so the bunnies can feast. Of course, we’ll plant our usual crop of cucumbers – kirbys and divas for me, marketmore 76 for Paul, several more peppermint plants. Cherry tomatoes – sungold, grapes, and sweet millions, enough to feed the entire town. This new outlook of working the soil, saving our planet, ravenous to learn and share sustains us through hungry times of solitude. -- Poem Garden What if there were no produce departments or farm stands, no place to buy grapes or tomatoes, no watermelons in summer, no seven varieties of lettuce to salad your hunger for crisp, healthy eating... What if words no longer worked to tell a story, or show a reader the lining of your heart in verse, no way to know how nourishing a poem can be for someone starved of metaphoric sustenance, void of satisfying similes... What if a famine befell us, like a virus that spread around the world, in cities and farmlands, urban and suburban alike, a pandemic to keep us from hugging, from touching hand to hand or reaching out across a screen of technology to know we are not alone... What if we overcame our fears, followed wise counsel, emptied our hearts of rage and anger to write love poems, emptied our refuse piles to rake in amendments to change our outlook to planting seeds of unity to sprout nutritious, delicious meals of poems served on vibrant platters to everyone in every town, city, state, country of our survival on a planet we adopt as mother, plant a garden of wholesome words with roots to reach everyone... would you feel nourished? I would.  J R (Judy) Turek, Superintendent of Poetry for the LI Fair, 2020 Hometown Hero by the East Meadow Herald, 2019 LI Poet of the Year, Bards Laureate 2013-2015, editor, workshop leader, recipient of two Pushcart nominations, and author of six poetry books, the most recent 24 in 24. ‘The Purple Poet’ has written a poem a day for 18 years; she lives on Long Island with her soul-mate husband, Paul, her dogs, and her extraordinarily extensive shoe collection.
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The Planter He knows a thing or two about edibles emerging tentatively from trampled earth from tilled earth from earth that lies dormant until impregnation of seed until saturation of life’s liquid until the warm bright gleam penetrates the fleeing darkness He knows about planting planting seeds in soil rich or barren on hills swept clean while wind whistles near streams that gush or trickle on desertscapes bereft of promise in skyscraper gardens and rural enclaves of the lost and forgotten Yes. He knows about planting planting ideas that curl and spiral up from smokey inspiration spaced just so… so they can breathe, can stretch their ephemeral limbs before settling in to the hard work of feeding minds and spirits… He knows their gripping pangs their clenching their yearning gaping maws reminiscent of avarice yet are more kin to need not greed… when you dive into the depths penetrate into the core of things what’s required is sustenance not comeuppance He knows beyond the power of gray matter and questing tendrils knows somehow in his marrow in his molecules that prickle all the way to skin, from corns and callouses to follicles that mere morsels can serve as understudies for feasts He knows that his heart beats his blood flows, his neurons fire in replication of all who breathe have breathed will breathe… their hues as salient as dandruff on a white jacket  T. A. was a seed planted in the Caribbean soil of Trinidad & Tobago on the cusp of the transformational 60s. He was watered and fertilized in the gardens of Brooklyn, New York and Hartford, Connecticut throughout most of the bell-bottomed, “blaxploitation-movie-era” of the 70s. Had trials by fire in the USMC in the late 70s to early 80s. Budded and bloomed in academia in the 80s and 90s, before his withering began at the turn of the 21st century. Yet, before he falls from the stem, and is ground once more into dust, he hopes to feed a mind or two. He relishes the thought of others being nourished by his expressions. T. A. is also thrilled to have narrated Mud Ajar, the latest collection of poems penned by Poetry X Hunger's founder Hiram Larew and made available to the public by Atmosphere Press.
Food is Love – A Toast Blair Ewing is a poet who lives just north of Baltimore. He has been publishing and
performing his poems for more than forty years. His multi-album audio book "Word of Mouth"--rumor has it will appear in digital form in 2022. Poverty from Wild Animals on the Moon It gives you pigeon eyes, makes you brave as a cracked slate with all the weight of a house on top. It bids you hold out your quaky hand through bittersweet temptations. You dream of it as slick silvery fish between your hands wide-eyed and breathless but it circles your bleeding feet like sharks. At evening time between lampposts and garbage drums turned over in the wind poverty is black ice or a train whose departure you miss whistling at you in the distance. Your will is chalky on your tongue like aspirin and patience hangs like frayed dreads down your back. Morning bends the scalpel-sharp pain in the ribcage, love’s sulfur-dazed eyes. Two teabags in your wallet for when the day is done and poverty at your feet like a hungry dog laps up the sweat of your calves. You come and go not speaking fumbling for a ripcord through a thousand leagues of wild wind. Click on the file below to listen to the poem: 
 Naomi Ayala is the author of three books of poetry. Her most recent, Calling Home: Praise Songs and Incantations, was published by Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe. She’s also the translator of one novel and a poetry collection. She lives in Washington, DC.
Hunger, Greed, and Pride In honor of Hiram Larew Hungry children awaken, their cups so very empty In all times, all places, and without fault In crumbling cities and towns parched by sun and salt Dreaming of honey, milk, and food aplenty Hunger, Greed and Pride Harbingers of poverty Denying the poor their security Onward, onward they stride. They tell us that verdant valleys Could feed ALL the world’s poor… But why, oh why won’t The Río Cauca feed South America? The River Nile feed North Africa? The Ganges feed South Asia? Hunger, Greed and Pride Harbingers of poverty Denying the poor their security Onward, onward they stride. Latins, Africans, and Indians, hungry at dawn’s light Forgotten, fearful and neglected By autocrats, forever rejected Condemned to a common, wretched plight. Hunger, Greed and Pride Harbingers of poverty Denying the poor their security Onward, onward they stride…  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. She often watched him read poetry at home and on the banks of rivers, and she witnessed the joy it brought him. Emily’s life is much more prosaic. She leads an institute devoted to assisting countries in all world regions to build systems and services for early child development with the goal of helping every child to develop her or his inborn full potential. This poem speaks of her anguish over the plight today of millions of young children who needlessly experience hunger, disease and abandonment in societies that ignore them and with autocratic leaders who even disdain them. Kwashiorkor Indigenous, she stands in that alley still, and always will, to my eye. Naked, maybe nine, her belly’s a swell of leaked fluids around a shrunk stomach. Misshapen knobs for knees and elbows. A passing glance may catch her, just, her slightest motion slow and thick. Eyes glazed, expressionless. What family forsakes its continuity? Or will added food be set in front of sons? A Mayan woman sits waiting, almost at noon, stock-still on the curb. Her face is a closed wound, her husband a soiled rumple in the parched gutter at her feet sleeping it off. Throughout this dry season her demeanor’s caked in dust and ash, her girl by now another limp sparrow impaled on a thorn by shrikes as the volcano brews its sullen cloud. Click on the link to watch the video: Forsbergh Kwashiorkor - YouTube Here is the link below for the poem about being up on the Mayan temple at night: https://youtu.be/N2_iHR92DsE  Forsbergh’s poetry has appeared in JAMA, The Journal of Neurology, Artemis Journal, The Northern Virginia Review, Ponder Review, The Café Review, and several other venues, including as a placard on an Arlington County bus. A retired dentist, and a Vietnam veteran, he has participated in three medical missions in Guatemala and Appalachia, and has volunteered as a vaccinator against COVID-19 in Loudoun County, Virginia. He lives in Leesburg, Virginia, and is attending seminary part-time at The John Leland Center in the subject of social justice.
My African Food is a song written and performed by the musician Evan Belize (A.K.A. Evan A. Trapp). The video was filmed by Joan Dobbie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOK2ZmhgPIQ  Evan Belize created this song in honor of the 2008 WORLD FOOD DAY. As a boy in the Caribbean, he witnessed hunger first hand, and also in his travels. He’s been performing since his earliest youth in the 1970s. Over the years Evan has opened for, and performed with, many of the greatest Caribbean and African icons. For a time he had his own band, Earth Forces. Presently he hosts the EBLS Livestream Radio program on YouTube and takes his solo harmonica performances on the road, sharing colorful original arrangements with audiences world wide.
I found a kitten once It was lying in a field of ribs and twisted spine I called the vet and said I found a starving cat what can I do? Feed it, she said I knew she was wrong. The body changes without food and what once was food becomes deadly when death has got his grip so tight that hunger is no longer known I knew it would take something more some special kind of food to draw that fragile body once again into the land of life Something sweet & thin like mother’s milk which I had, in fact, back then to feed my son & so we shared  Joan Dobbie co-hosts the River Road Reading Series (RRRS)
<riverroadreadings.blogspot.com> presently on Zoom. She teaches Hatha Yoga at the University of Oregon, and loves to share her poetry, which often seems confessional, and sometimes is. Hunger It’s only in the last year, really that I’ve allowed myself to think about it – about what it might have been actually like There. I’ve permitted myself to read. And once, late, past midnight, to view photographs posted on the internet: stark black and whites, three of each person one from each side, one full front. Although I was not allowed to stop and examine them closely, some details were inescapable. A woman’s wiry hair matted into a halo around her head as though she had just been used to mop the floor; Fear, thinly disguised as intellect, peering shadowlike though wire-rimmed spectacles; Fear, bursting beneath a black silk bosom. Fear in every eye that catches mine. They know. They all know. The photos I was looking for were not posted. Perhaps there was no time for foolery and cameras on that day. With each morsel of knowledge I gain, my hunger grows. I’ve never been able to throw even a potato skin away but now the pots of leftovers in the fridge whisper insistently to me in the night. I stumble into the kitchen not an hour after dinner and gorge myself on cold pasta, congealed beans, a sandwich with questionable mayonnaise which has been to a picnic at the river and back and spent a week in repose wrapped in sandy tinfoil on the second shelf, pink slices of ham, the flesh tearing as I hastily extract them from the plastic encasing, explaining (as I push the soft folds into my mouth) to the air that it is allowable to break kosher in cases of emergency. The more I know, the more I need to atone, to stuff my gullet, round my body into curves and counter curves. I’m doing it now, I tell you. I’m eating a bagel as I write, the seeds dripping onto the paper, cream cheese smudging the corner as I turn the page, plate resting on the hill of my belly. eating as if sheer gluttony were the antidote to starvation. I bought half a dozen this morning and the three that are left are calling to me, plaintively twining their poppy seeded fingers through the razor wire, begging. Click on the file below to listen to Grace read her poem:
 Filmmaker and poet Grace Beeler lives in Hillsborough NC. She is the director of After the Rain, an NGO which houses both the Appropriate Sanitation Institute and the Triangle Refugee Film Project. When she is not teaching ESL at Durham Tech Community College she spends her time advocating for refugees and cleaning up urban waterways in the developing world.
She Came for Brisket but left with Ravioli She came for brisket but left with ravioli, a bag of oranges and a loaf of bread Disappointed to have her expectations dashed Too late for the brisket and the hot buttery rolls -- But the warm ravioli soothed and comforted her soul.  Margaret Brittingham is a Professor of Wildlife Resources at Penn State University where she teaches ornithology and conducts research on birds. She is part of a team that volunteers at the Community Café in State College, Pa, an excellent cooperative endeavor that provides weekly meals to the community.
This poem was inspired by an event that occurred in early February. The café usually serves about 150 meals per night, but on this particular evening, the word was out that the café was serving brisket and homemade rolls. Instead of the usual 150 meals, we had requests for 200 meals. The rule for the café is “If you think you might run out of food,... don’t”. As we watched the brisket and rolls disappear, we pulled out the emergency supply of ravioli and cooked a delicious substitute meal for the late arrivals. The next week, I attended the GLAG poetry session and was inspired to write this poem. GLAG = Global Learning in Agriculture, an annual conference sponsored by Pennsylvania State University -- Global Learning in Agriculture Week | #GLAG21: Taking Action (psu.edu) |
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