​Female Hunger in Brazil

You strip our needs
take away opportunities
of who we want to be.

Domestic jobs
stripping our hands raw.
So overworked, our calluses bleed in pleads to stop.

But will that time ever come?
The moment the day's work is finally done.
More hours worked than any man could ever maintain in his thoughts,
replaced by earnings worth no more than the dirt underneath our feet.

5 mouths to feed
excluding me.
How do you expect us to eat?

Your system is poverty,
leaving us vulnerable
left to lean on men.

Because in a life of “independence”
where a woman can be the head of house,
you bring us back down to the size of a mouse.

How can we possibly dream
of the places we’d like to be?

Because you strip our needs
take away opportunities
of who we want to be.

When all we’re trying to do,

is
eat.

Works Cited
Charles H. Wood & Erica Felker-Kantor (2013) The Color of Hunger: Food Insecurity
and Racial Inequality in Brazil, Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, 8:3,
304-322, DOI: 10.1080/17442222.2013.797214

The Price of a bite

I just saw a little black girl
stealing an apple
from a grocer’s display
deliciously arranged…
a feast for the eye...

I just saw a little black girl
stealing an apple
from a grocer’s display
deliciously arranged…
a feast for a child’s hungry eyes...

I just saw a little black girl
stealing an apple
from a grocer’s display
she took a desperate bite
and in no time…
the city’s police…surrounded her side...

I just saw a little black girl
stealing an apple
which the law confiscated…
…evidence…hunger…
handcuffed…
The terrified child did not cry…
She did not belong to anyone...

I just saw a little black girl
so hungry…stealing an apple…
she took a desperate bite
now handcuffed at best
hunger on her mind...
Under arrest...
To be punished…demoralized
unable to run away…

The apple lost its value
The police executed…it’s the law...
The child still hungry...
The angry grocer threw the apple
blemished with that desperate bite…
into a garbage can…
A church-going white grocery man…
I saw his gilded cross on a golden chain...
Afraid…threatened
she might steal again…
I saw a little black girl
being hungry in America….

Once...I...was hungry
malnutrition and TB
searching the ruins of a devastated Germany...
A war child…fingers pointed at me…
I was to beg and steal…
And should I get caught
I was told to say:
…I am hungry...
And take the “mundraub” plea
(take the “mouth robbery survival ” plea)
I might get away…so they did say...

American parcels…full of care
saved me…saved a foreign
white boy…
The kid son of a defeated enemy
thank you...America the beautiful...

These days I can’t forget…
I saw little girls…
I remember young boys…
Half-frozen people
Children POW’s…with no noses...no ears...no fingers...no
toes...
I saw hunger…in staring eyes
A dead Nation…no moral to be found
on that blood-soaked earthen ground...

So…I found you…America
I came to you…America
Like you…I am now too…America…
Now my nightmare…is America...
What happened…to your care… America?
It was once…me
Who stole a bun
like you…little black girl
from a display
deliciously arranged
a feast for a hungry eye...
By God…did I run…
Yes…I was lucky…and got away…
But you…little black girl
You are handcuffed...
Hungry…and that in America…today...

Your apple was thrown away…
Unsellable
into America’s obese garbage can…
Now…we feed the swamp of riches...
America…what is the price of a bite?
…Imagine…
We would care
and feed that little black girl… America...the bountiful
But for now
we must re-learn to earn
to become again…America…the Beautiful.....

Superpowers
             After a photograph in the New York Times

Formed from a torn tablecloth, his checkered cape
floats freely behind him, arms spread,
one foot suspended in air, ready to leap

from the kitchen shelf into his father’s arms.
He has his balance. A five-year-old boy with
superpowers. A boy ready for flight.

The boy will take flight soon with his father.
But they will not fly, they will walk, perhaps more
than a hundred shadeless days. They will leave

behind the tablecloth, the kitchen,
the brilliant hues of the quetzal bird
flying across a woven blanket. The father

has surveyed his coffee fields, once fertile,
leaves now consumed in brown fungus,
no sooner rotting than passing their poison

to the next plant, leaving the belly of the boy
almost as empty as the belly of the father.
I wish him superpowers

to move safely across borders
he knows they are not welcomed to cross,
spurned by a power as unyielding as his land.

This poem first appeared in Ocotillo Review.
©Joanne Durham 2022

Click to hear the poet read the poem.

Hunger: Who Cares?

No one cares whether I have eaten or not
No one cares whether it’s the call from the belly or the fucking tongue again
No one cares whether the pregnant goat on my plate was hungry before it
was slain
No one cares if the shadow of the food on my plate is overpriced or not
No one cares whether I sold a kiss as per my desires or not
No one cares if I eat mindlessly or mindfully
No one cares if a poor mother from slum chasing her child holding a roti on
the GT Road dies in some traffic accident
May I ask questions on measuring the length of our moral obligations and my
unstoppable diarrhoea which can lead your mind to an infinite spiral?
But who cares whether I’m confused or not?
Do I care if they buy branded clothes, gold, diamond, iPhones, Tesla?
They should be concerned only if I eat and produce more children
They should be but why will I?