A Sudanese Phantom

I crossed the grand vastness
          between my grave and your doorstep.
I passed your glass palaces:
          solemn monuments to Mammon.
I glided upon fiber optic webs:
          cords caring pulses of lies.
I’ve heard all the growling of Man
          in the throats of blood-mongers.

I declare ‘Shame!’
          Shame! Shame! Shame!
Yes, I’ve seen many shameful things
          yet there are absences in my findings.
I find no empty storehouses here;
          no salted farming soil,
          no shortage of full fridges
          in this land where excess is exegesis.

So, I desire an honest show of hands:
          Who among you has ever
          actually
          ​starved?

On the Oreo

It lies in wait like a cockroach on my counter, indestructible,
Evolutionary titan, alien artifact, blue wrapper,
Black and white graphic, imprinted since infancy,
One fourth of a day’s calories in six bites, Big Food love child.

It was a pity buy off a brown-skinned, mute mother
Surfing the subway with her box of stale treats.
Blasting from the next car, babe wrapped to her chest,
Her passage crafted us a sandwich

Of annoyance/anguish/annoyance, choking complacency.
I resist looking. I imagine myself
She beseeches but only with her hungry eyes
As she sways to the world’s harsh rhythms.

Has no one told her these plastic treats are toxic?
A class of people living behind their walls,
To which I too often aspire, won’t touch these brands.
While for those living outside such walls, they’re just another day.

When did my favorite after-school treat, so perfect
With a glass of milk or Kool Aid, become a brick in that wall?
Once the only controversy was whether to bite down as is,
Or split, lick and chew. Bible School was riven by the question.

Or there’s the taunt of racial sincerity,
“She’s just an Oreo.” That caustic metaphor chimes
Sharply off the world’s most popular cookie,
First engineered in New York’s Chelsea Market

Before its later heydays of trans hookers,
Drug dealers and now Google. No longer
Made in the USA. Contains a bioengineered food ingredient.
Trans fats or not, here it is, badged and blue, in my kitchen.

​A glass of milk. My little brother and me,
Breathless after our games. We each take three,
Dividing the package equally, as we do our chores.
Oh, blue devil, if I thought I’d die tomorrow, you’d be my last.

School Lunch

Amorphous pink bagged milk
And a burger patty
Unlike McDonald’s, no Big Mac for your father
Your eyes are table level, and the chairs are blue
And it folds in two

Tin can, cut sausage, fried egg
Lunch monitor puts her hand down like a clamp
Shush, shush, walk in line
Fingers to your lips
Milk is 35 cents
Your silver dollar coin comes from the pink bank
Tall as you, but hollow inside

Trade a tater tot and a couple of fries
For a Garfield comic
Eat a hot dog out of context
Or a milky sandwich in old restaurant foil
Envy the cornbread and the cowboy bread
Find out later you could have had it for free

Collect the violin backstage
Scrape the cake off cardboard
Best you’ve ever tasted
Pizza party, but you’re also not invited

Eat perfect fries for a dollar
With a self-proclaimed hacker
Cut a Hot Pocket with a fork after the towers fall
Split a hoagie, but begrudgingly
No sandwich ever tastes as good after that

Greasy burgers, soft serve, hot cookies
Listen to Avril every morning
Get your PE credit out of the way
First Starbucks, taquitos in the hallway
Braid your hair like Kylie at the Brit Awards

Sunday roast, steal a pie
Eat all the cereal, Texas waffles
Breakfast tacos and bad coffee
Pepperoni rolls from the vendor
Starbucks, Starbucks, Chipotle

Eat everything at once
And then you don’t eat at all

Sirens, Soot, and Starving Souls
​
Their bellies growl, rumble through the rubble
Mimic the sirens and wails of the wind
They walk through ashes, kicking empty bottles
Searching for scraps, soot rests on crying tongues
They hug their bellies, eyes beg the sunlight
Clinging to hope
Amid the bitter betrayal of bombs
And the hands that released them

Click to hear the poet read the poem:

Shopping Cart Jesus

I drag this cart
Through dried bones of the city
Metal groaning like my insides
A new place that's become home to me
The bulldozer keep pushing me further
Away from what I knew
I've become flicker in their rearview
A stain they’d rather wash off their streets

I once had a name
But it blew away with the last winter
Lost in the ash of factories
That don’t spit fire anymore
Tossed into overfilled dumpsters
Becoming damp and wrought
With memories of youth

Now I’m just a pair of cracked hands
Clutching the handle of this rusted cage
Filled with ghosts of things I’ll never own
Family I'll never see
And songs I try to remember
They say laughter is the best medicine
But not when you're laugh at me

You think I’m nothing
But I’ve seen more
Than your eyes could believe
I've watched the city rot from the inside

After the evictions of seniors
It bloom renewed
The people who made the city
Have all gone away
Left is a gentrified community
With food trucks and electric cars

I’m the shadow of your worst fear
The thing you don’t dare become
I am human too
More real than your luxury condos
Than the plastic smiles you wear
To mask your own hunger

My home is wherever I lay my head
It's filthy, decayed, and full of feces
It's not warm or comfortable
It's sometimes just a tarp
But once in awhile I get to sleep
In a house
With no electricity or heat
Eating?
Yeah, I eat whatever I can find
Don't mind the sound of my stomach
That's just god being divine

It doesn't matter how I got here
Our stories aren't cared for anyway
Just excuses and lies
You call me lazy, stupid, and gross
However, I am a lot like you
I want to be noticed and loved too

I once dreamed like you
Homes with roofs that held tight
Windows that opened to let the world in
Now they are boarded up to keep me out
Nah, I guess it's not that bad
I could be dead
That'll probably happen sooner than later
If you find me laying on a slab of concrete
Would you at least take the shoes off my feet?
Put them aside for someone else
Maybe they'll have better luck living in this hell

Bennington-Love, Lisa. Paper Monsters. Phantom Stitch Press, 2025. “Shopping Cart Jesus.”

Peaches

I want to sink my teeth into the ripe August peach,
To feel the longing hunger answered, sweet and rich.
Please be forgiving,
As the fruit juice dries, sticking to my cheeks,
Dripping down my fingers, crystalizing in the sharp grass below,
The bugs enjoy their share.
It is a messy thing
To want life so fiercely, to devour it whole.

I dreamed up an adult
So perfectly satiated and clean, only
To find satisfaction in the stickiness of summer fruit,
In dirty hands, sunburnt cheeks, and a hunger that never shrinks.
​
Piles of unkempt laundry await, but I leave them,
Chasing after another bite of the day soon to set.
Mismatched plates served to hungry mouths,
Sharing wine, our garden's jammy tomatoes, leftover pierogi and cheese.
We are at home here, in this messy little life,
Where hunger is sated not through perfected meals,
But by the shared joy of taking, and giving,
Of tasting all we can.

BIO: Jess is a passionate hobbyist with a love for creative expression. Lots of her poetry draws inspiration from her adventures in travel, food, rock climbing, backpacking, and just plain being outdoors. For Jess, poetry often feels like a form of journaling and that it can capture the essence of her experiences & emotions in a way that prose cannot. In her eyes, art is the best form of therapy and a unique means to explore herself and the world around her.

Soup of the Day

In the soup!
Something soupy
or mushy
like cream of mushroom,
or brothy
like chicken noodle ,
thick
like pea!

Soupy!
The weather, the air.
the toxic waste.

Chowder, consommé. chili, stew,
poured from Andy’s can
or started with a chicken’s
decimated carcass.

Sip, slurp, dip
a silver spoon.

the well-fed feed
while the poor boil plants, roots,
tree bark in filthy water,
add dirt for thickness,
a witch’s brew
for the impoverished.
Spit out splinters and teeth,
leave the table with belly and soul
starved.

I was a Lucky One

My mother cooked
naively,
tuna casseroles, pigs
in blankets,
meat loaf.
Once I moved to the city,
I mocked her skill
to take a perfectly good
roast beef
and turn it into
a small black rock.

My parents worked hard
to feed us.
They offered love,
support, education
and countless meals.
                  I would trade the organic
                  vegetables and cereals
                  I am privileged to eat
                  to spend an hour
                  ​chewing my mother’s Sunday roast.
Food was available, plentiful,
enough to fill a stomach, healthy enough
to grow
me.