UNITY (Unity can end hunger)

Open my eyes: a stream of light
Open my mouth: a burst of questions
Open my heart: a wheel barrow comes to the fore carrying vocal cords
I feel a surrendered tenderness pulsating in my chest
Weak point
I imagine a vast, clear space, in my head
A mind
My stomach
Wants to protect, give abundance
If only hunger could be eaten
If only desire could be undesired
An inclination dreaming in cloud forests
Intuition that comes from an unknown address
Abundance that the earth gives
Cycles that give cycles
Unity that gives me death
Unity that gives you eternity
Unity that gives us, us

This poem first appeared in Isabela's book "Rain Love Death Poets", published by Ediciones Vitruvio, Madrid.

THEME: Historical Hunger

First, You Feed Them
            —after Jane Hirschfield

You live in the desert, on a dusty road,
far from the farthest place.
You live on shifting sand, on borrowed time,
the narrow edge of breath.
And every day they come, the foot-sore,
the destitute. You open your door and look
in their eyes. They say nothing.
They ask nothing. They have nothing.
You know nothing of them but that each
has a story, a dream half-smothered
in their dusty past, a need that drives them on.
You do not ask. First, you feed them.
First you offer a glass of cold water, a place
for them to wash up and lie down, a room
where they can feel safe.
Only then, in the light of the new day,
do you say, Tell me about your people.
Only then can their stories be heard
above those of your own. Only then do you see
that those visitors are you.

THEME: Historical Hunger

Dhaka

arriving in Dhaka
the city unfolded,
opening doors and pathways
to understanding,
some passages so
painful
I can never forget

in years that followed
the city became a portent
more than memory, of what
the world could and would
be: teeming, restless
too-full, mostly unknown

but how to account
for the difference:
riding in the car
from
Gulshan to
the center of the city,
beset by people,
begging:

​to be included in the world,
to be seen,
to be given something
to eat

Written in 2021; THEME: Childhood Hunger, Historical Hunger

Leningrad

I've heard stories about hunger:
my mother begging for turnips for two years.
my father roasting the tongues
of his boots when the war ended.
But neither had it as bad as the people
in Leningrad, sieged for nine hundred days, three winters
without food. They traded diamond rings
and icons for meat patties. Human meat,
slightly sweet like horseflesh, though fattier.
I know it's easy to lose one's hunger:
after days, it deepens to a dull ache,
and after weeks of eating nothing,
the body's used itself
for fuel, and food's foreign as plastic.
But when instead of fasting you eat a little,
you remain ravenous, conscious
of sour breath and the stomach as an open sore,
and eager to admit that everything feeds
on something in this world.
For that admission, nothing expiates, not
the weekly airlift, not
parks lined by avenues of birches, not
voices in candlelit chapels,
and not summers
bathed in long, milky northern light.

THEME: Historical Hunger

Natasha Sajé was born stateless in Germany, and grew up in New York City and its suburbs. Her books include The Future Will Call You Something Else (Tupelo, 2023); a postmodern poetry handbook, Windows and Doors: A Poet Reads Literary Theory (Michigan, 2014); and a memoir, Terroir: Love, Out of Place (Trinity UP, 2020). She teaches in the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing Program and lives in Washington, DC.
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