Salt

There is always salt.

Even when the cabinets are bare,
even when the fridge echoes,
even when the last piece of bread is memory.

Salt remains in its small glass shaker,
faithful and patient.

A pinch falls into hot water.
Clouds for a second.
Then disappears.

The cup is lifted with both hands,
carefully, respectfully,
as if it holds more than it does.

Sip.

Close your eyes.

Pretend.

Pretend this is broth.
Pretend this is soup.
Pretend this is enough.

Salt has learned how to lie gently.
How to convince the tongue
that something is happening.

How to make warm water feel like care.

And for a few quiet minutes,
the body agrees to believe it.

Until the cup is empty,
and the truth settles back in

​heavier than before.

Theme: Empty-stomach hunger

BIO: Rana Musleh is a student at Lehman College and a writer whose work focuses on dignity, hunger, and the emotional realities of food insecurity. Her work has been published by West Side Campaign Against Hunger and Poetry X Hunger. She uses poetry to explore how memory, culture, and inequality shape access to food and belonging. Through poetry, she hopes to turn awareness into empathy and empathy into action.

AUGURIES

This ground's a dead sea--
frozen mud, debris churned up
by winter frost heaves,
tractable as cement.
I prod and poke with an auger,
drill in the seed;
nothing can grow:
a season of zeroes,
a garden of stones.

But I will keep faith:
on the day of St. Patrick,
I will plant peas,
praying for green.
I will believe in June,
the return of the sun,
and I will taste the snap
of sugar
on my hungering tongue.
             from Barbara Crooker: Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press, 2015)

THEME: Hunger for beauty

At the Grocery Store

You see him or someone like him
Every time you’re at the store.
Scraggly gray hair, worn and dirty clothes, weathered skin, sunken eyes.
You don’t want to look at him because you don’t know
What to say, what to do, how to help.
You, who can walk into the store and buy anything you want.
Inside, you drop sandwiches, a few desserts, and some chips
into your cart and search for a cold drink.
On your way out, you hand the man a bag of food—just some lunch, you say
And he smiles—his teeth are stained, his lips cracked and dry.
“You know there’s a shelter down the block,” you tell hm.
“Thank you, ma’am. My wife’s there because she needs oxygen.
Me, I’m sleeping in the woods, but just until those new apartments
Open up across the street.” His story keeps unspooling—Iraq veteran, lost his job,
Unable to pay his medical bills. I see a quiet dignity in his gray-green eyes when he says,
“But, yes, ma’am, my wife and I will be good again when we’re in the new place.”
Both of us nourished in that shared moment.

THEME: Adult Hunger

Why the Difference Café
Brunch Menu

We proudly use locally available ingredients. Prices may vary.

*** Starts ***
Fried Calamari with Peppered Remoulade
or
Salt Crackers, Lightly Crumbled

*** Mains ***
Steak Tartare with Couscous and Scallion Tapenade
or
Peanut Butter on Bread

*** Accompaniments ***
Haricot Verts with Toasted Coconut Flakes
or
Slice, American Cheese

*** Sweets ***
Glazed Seasonal Berries with Pistachio Macaroons
or
Chewing Gum

*** Beverages ***
Cinnamon Mocha Latte with Soy
or
Tap Water

 THEME: Stark differences in food availability. 

BIO: Hiram Larew founded the informal Poetry X Hunger initiative in 2017 as a way to bring two areas of interest – poetry and hunger prevention – together.  Upon retiring from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where he helped guide international agriculture programs, he noticed that relatively little poetry about hunger was available. Believing in the power of poetry to touch hearts and minds, he launched Poetry X Hunger as a way to encourage poets to write about hunger.

Hunger 
      - After the announcement of USAID cuts
 
Smell the food left in the harbor to rot. 
Even the frozen fast food. 
The sugar bits and bones 
they’ve thrown out 
at the end of their dinners.

The starving starts in the pit 
of your stomach, moves
to your heart.  

After you’d finally tasted artichokes,
yogurt with the fat on the top,
eaten real sun ripened tomatoes. 

After you’d peeled the onions,
cut them up without crying,
added them to a pot of stew
with so much left over
you could feed the world

how did this happen?

THEME: World Hunger

Eighty Years Ago: The Passing

“Mama, you are crying!
Why are you crying?
Why?”

“Our neighbors with white hair
Who loved you so…
Who played with you…”
“Yes, Mama, let’s visit them.”

“They were found today.
They were not moving.
They were holding each other.”
“What happened, Mama?”

“They had no food.
They were very proud.
No one knew!”
“Can’t they play with me, Mama?”

“I am so sorry, my little one.
They cannot hug you anymore.
They cannot play with you ever again.
Remember them, always.”
And so, all my long life,
I have remembered them
And I miss them…

THEME: Elder Hunger

BIO: 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. This poem relates an experience of her childhood that haunts her to this day.

Ignored and Unfed

​I seriously do not know
What is wrong with me?
In my opinion
A normal internalization
And this is not called overdramatic
Despite what most say
Because I am deaf
But not enough to realize
How others truly perceive me
With blatant ignorance
Or an obsessive relentlessness
To supersede me
As much as possible
Reactions usually go
One way or the other
And so it is unfortunate
That we cannot seem to coexist
Since we forget about our similarities
For example, we speak
I have a voice
One so obnoxiously loud
That it could be easily mistaken
For a thunderstorm
But with a human tune
With less intention to bring havoc
And instead more motivation
To advocate for myself
It is necessary
Because without my mother
How do I trust that
anyone else knows me
For me?
She is the only person
Who sees my potential
And sees that I am
The whole package
As an individual who can
Provide sweet banter
And thoughtful advice
And a timeless
Sense of humor
I am able to
Provide all of this
Even with a disability
To me
Speaking is living
To at least try
And put myself out
In a world where
I cannot easily belong in
Where being a piece
Of an incredibly tiny minority
Has its downsides of invisibility
Due to this
One problem I persistently have
On a daily basis
Is hunger
My plan for communication
Almost backfires
Since asking for meals
Takes me
An unreasonable amount of effort
I am used to food insecurity
But that does not mean
I should accept it without complaint
Whenever at restaurants
I am sure to wail like a lengthy siren
To communicate an emergency
Of my stomach continuously grumbling
Like a dormant volcano
Soon to erupt
If left unsatisfied
Most waiters do this
Because that are unfamiliar
With sign language
Which leaves them
To depend upon others
To face me instead
But there is only so many individuals
Involved in what seems to be
Family-owned food businesses
Along my home street
That any request of mine
Never gets fulfilled
No lunch break between work
Seems worth it
No ridiculously bright red Marinara sauce
To top a bowl of spiced spaghetti strands
Or a neatly baked, but slightly charred
Flatbread with hummus and pesto
Which is still a scrumptious feast
There is nothing much for me
Which is why I must suffice
With whatever is left in the office vending machine
A few sugary, chocolately, and sometimes stale
Energy bars are what I seek every afternoon
Which is sustainable calorie-wise
but these lack the nutrition value
To maintain strength throughout the day
And keep focus at a high
Food accessibility is also difficult
At grocery stores
Transactions at the check-out line are awkward
And most of the time
The clerks lack the decency
To even attempt and translate a message
Using a black-ink pen and notepad
That I am short in the cash
Needed to pay for what I want
This means I must drop everything
And come back another day
Maybe I will be lucky then
But these type of interactions have repeated
And so I remain unhopeful
Of my ability to secure
Even a sliver of a chicken thigh
Or a plastic bag
Of a few tomatoes and cucumbers
Searching through my kitchen fridge
At hours on end
Is what my weekday evenings are about
And it will remain this way
If no one is willing to change
And empathize with those
Who need food and a decent meal
Just as much as anyone else
I seriously do not know
What is wrong with me?
In my opinion
A normal internalization
And this is not called overdramatic
Despite what most say
Because I am deaf
But not enough to realize
How others truly perceive me
With blatant ignorance
Or an obsessive relentlessness
To supersede me
As much as possible
Reactions usually go
One way or the other
And so it is unfortunate
That we cannot seem to coexist
Since we forget about our similarities
For example, we speak
I have a voice
One so obnoxiously loud
That it could be easily mistaken
For a thunderstorm
But with a human tune
With less intention to bring havoc
And instead more motivation
To advocate for myself
It is necessary
Because without my mother
How do I trust that
anyone else knows me
For me?
She is the only person
Who sees my potential
And sees that I am
The whole package
As an individual who can
Provide sweet banter
And thoughtful advice
And a timeless
Sense of humor
I am able to
Provide all of this
Even with a disability
To me
Speaking is living
To at least try
And put myself out
In a world where
I cannot easily belong in
Where being a piece
Of an incredibly tiny minority
Has its downsides of invisibility
Due to this
One problem I persistently have
On a daily basis
Is hunger
My plan for communication
Almost backfires
Since asking for meals
Takes me
An unreasonable amount of effort
I am used to food insecurity
But that does not mean
I should accept it without complaint
Whenever at restaurants
I am sure to wail like a lengthy siren
To communicate an emergency
Of my stomach continuously grumbling
Like a dormant volcano
Soon to erupt
If left unsatisfied
Most waiters do this
Because that are unfamiliar
With sign language
Which leaves them
To depend upon others
To face me instead
But there is only so many individuals
Involved in what seems to be
Family-owned food businesses
Along my home street
That any request of mine
Never gets fulfilled
No lunch break between work
Seems worth it
No ridiculously bright red Marinara sauce
To top a bowl of spiced spaghetti strands
Or a neatly baked, but slightly charred
Flatbread with hummus and pesto
Which is still a scrumptious feast
There is nothing much for me
Which is why I must suffice
With whatever is left in the office vending machine
A few sugary, chocolately, and sometimes stale
Energy bars are what I seek every afternoon
Which is sustainable calorie-wise
but these lack the nutrition value
To maintain strength throughout the day
And keep focus at a high
Food accessibility is also difficult
At grocery stores
Transactions at the check-out line are awkward
And most of the time
The clerks lack the decency
To even attempt and translate a message
Using a black-ink pen and notepad
That I am short in the cash
Needed to pay for what I want
This means I must drop everything
And come back another day
Maybe I will be lucky then
But these type of interactions have repeated
And so I remain unhopeful
Of my ability to secure
Even a sliver of a chicken thigh
Or a plastic bag
Of a few tomatoes and cucumbers
Searching through my kitchen fridge
At hours on end
Is what my weekday evenings are about
And it will remain this way
If no one is willing to change
And empathize with those
Who need food and a decent meal
Just as much as anyone else

BIO: Esha Kannan is a freshman at the University of California at Davis who is studying data science and passionate about advocating for underrepresented groups, especially neurodivergent individuals. She enjoys creative writing and she been recently into poetry as a way of self-expression and communication about issues she cares about most. In her free time, she loves going out in nature, meeting new people, and playing sports such as volleyball and ultimate frisbee.

​How To Distract
"about my grandma's village in the West Bank, it's been torched and olive and almond trees cut down these past few weeks…” —Naomi Shihab Nye on Facebook
​
1
A hard rain stripped the tender
New azalea blooms
Now a pale pink skirt
Flattened on the ground.

All I can think--
The three-year-old girl
Wearing a pink dress.
Blown in half.
​
2
Captive, I watch the massacre
Like all of us, day after year
After years, yet still feel a glimmer 
Of some small, hopeless 
Hope for peace before--
Before all the mass graves of barely shrouded skeletons overflow.
And children, like a small galaxy of stars, sleep under rubble. 
All that light—buried.

You, old friend, say the word is war.
I say what I see—massacre. You
Say I don’t know what I see;
I’ve not read enough history.
But what do women and small children
Have to do with history. Or Mass
Killing. Mass atrocity. Ethnic
Cleansing, genocide,
Crimes against humanity. Apocalypse.
Then you support Hamas, you say. Nausea
Like gravity all day, seeing
Severed breasts tossed
Like bloody rubber toys
From man to man
Laughing, as she dies.

3
They torched her grandmother’s village
She says, olive and almond trees
Cut down these past few weeks
While you and I argued
Legal definitions and debated
Back to the Canaanites and a headline
Read “How to Distract a Starving Child.”
​
It’s the cheapest way to kill.
The human heart shrinks. A muscle
The body eats. You and I
Claim, explain, accuse, defend
While our hands smudge
Blood on everything we touch
And children are forced
To eat their own hearts.

This poem is from Chivas' completed manuscript of a second collection, Summertime in America, which features two groups of poems about the Israel-Hamas war. These poems strive to fathom the lived experiences of Israeli and Palestinian women. They also aim to eclipse politics, amplify multiple perspectives, avoid retraumatization in the telling, and speak to the unspeakable.​

On Receiving an Email Forward Containing Kevin Carter's Pulitzer Prize Winning Photograph and a Plea for Gratitude

​are gratitude and hunger linked?
would the focus and faithfulness
of a monk who thanks god
with every breath
relieve starvation? and is such thankfulness
possible in this sphere of excess? perhaps
i should deprive myself
to achieve constant gratitude, because
even the memory of hunger, mild though
it was--like the third-grade day i went
to the school nurse, my stomach an ache
of emptiness--does little for the woman
who never has to worry if she forgets
her microwave lunch, her office flanked
by restaurants, her credit cards
eager to stand in for a depleted atm.

of course going to the nurse for hunger
is a luxury, knowing this you know
the child knew the hunger wouldn’t last–
believed, at least back then, in the system.
so you know the girl was lucky, but even
still . . . . if i drew a picture of that girl--
her belly aching--every morning before
i left the house, sketching in the kids at school calling
her anorexic, laughing, if i said ‘thank you god
for this food’ before i took a bite of anything,
the way some people do, would the famine-stricken
countries prosper? would any person
live a single minute longer, would
one child’s ascites begin to heal?

the boy in Kevin Carter’s picture did not suffer
from our lack of gratitude. some other sickness
weakened him for the vulture’s pleasure.
i won’t disclaim my part in it or pretend to know
its name. and when Carter killed
himself three months later, that wasn’t lack of gratitude
either, though some might call it that.
even if i understood in the midst of the traffic jam,
the flu, the break-up, how lucky i am, what could
i possibly make of it except that the world is unfair?
and wouldn’t it be odd to thank anyone for such deplorable excess?

​This poem was previously published in Knock Journal.

Hunger
​
I was born in the City of Dead
and died in the River of Children.
I am the infant smashed on the wall.
The kitchen is verboten!
The killers are insatiable for kalashnikovs.
Peshmerga, blood chief, my father.
Gulag, my mother, dirt soup.
I am yellow fever’s young boy
run wild in poppy fields,
scorched. My broken finger,
am I to blame? My little cowlick?