Jeffrey Banks, poetically known as "Big Homey" has had opportunities for his artist activism as an advocate against homelessness recognized nationally through presentations at universities, conferences and churches. His work in this arena has been recognized by notable figures such as Dr. Cornel West, Tavis Smiley, Richard Gere and NBA All-Star Allan Houston. In 2019, his poetry was featured in the National Association of Poetry Therapy Annual Conference and published in their anthology.

Serve Rice in Everything
 
Poor, fuels the imagination,
allows us to make 5 children believe,
popcorn for dinner, 3 nights in a row, is a treat.
 
Hard-up pushes my sister to learn
15 ways to fix potatoes, and that
adding rice in everything makes it go further.
 
Broke drives a single mother’s
$40.00 car, which runs on gas
by the gallon and daily silent prayers.
 
Bad-off demands a space heater in only 1 room,
an open gas oven with nothing baking,
tattered quilts over multiple sleepers.
 
Penniless lives on the street corner hosting
the Viet Nam veteran, the crack addict, and the
lost one with a cardboard carton house.
 
Down-and-out dwells in an un-insulated, rented house
with mold so bad the cabinets can’t be used
and the shower cleaned before anyone gets in.
 
Poverty walks beside the woman with dreams
as rundown as the heels of her white,
$6.00 flats, sloshing through November sleet.

Hunger down the Block
  
Michelangelo kicked his Moses in the knee
to make him move.  A kick in an empty stomach
took me home everyday summers:
canned tuna fish, mashed potatoes.  I wished for
more but ate whatever was dished out. 
 
Satisfied, I bit my lip to see my playmates
wrapped against the afternoon, their pools of septic fate,
and grew to know their upsurge, stealing food --
the upshot of their munching mouths,
their slow desire for any edible, half-eaten food
‘down the hatch,’  their laugher -- imagining
lives that swallow trout and sauerkraut.  
 
I post small gifts, drop coins in outstretched hands,
relive the fear, reflect what turns my stomach.

William Rivera has three full-length books, and one chapbook, of poems: Buried in the Mind’s Backyard (Brickhouse Books, 2011): The Living Clock (a chapbook, Finishing Line Press, 2013); Noise (Broadkill River Press, 2015); and Café Select, with reproductions by Spanish/American artist, Miguel Conde (Poet’s Choice Publishing, 2016). In recent years, he has published in numerous literary magazines, including: Innisfree, Broadkill River Review, Raven’s Perch, The Broome Review, California Quarterly, Gargoyle, Recursive Angel, The Curator Magazine, Third Wednesday, Ghazal. Lit Undressed, Blazevox, The Pangolin Review, 2River Review, Loch Raven, Dual Coast Magazine, and others.

Poet Brenda Bunting, she/her/hers is the author of “Poems of Love and Violence In Between Life and Death” 1st and 2nd editions on Amazon.com.  Brenda is published in numerous publications online and in print nationally and internationally. She is an insightful poetry workshop facilitator and spoken word artist with a passion for equality and racial, social, and environmental justice. Brenda is an active member of the Prince Georges County, MD poetry community. She is a life member of the Kentucky State Poetry Society and is working to complete her next books of poetry. Check out her artist page on Facebook at  https://www.facebook.com/pg/BDBpoet​

WHO WE ARE
 
“The cry did knock/against
                        my very heart…”  The Tempest
 
When we do not feed the hungry children in Biafra
Looking at tourists, then we are the camera, staring.
If we do not take away their starvation, then
We are also the black marketeers who stole their food.
We are the karmic seeds of Viet Nam
Running ablaze with fire on our backs.
We’re the hummingbird flying the Atlantic in March.
We are Katrina because clothes were soaked, and when
There was no more food, when no help came,
We were the empty verbs.
These are the tears that come unbidden for Mozambique,
For starving children in the trees,
Waiting for rescue helicopters. All this,
When there were other possibilities.
Don’t you feel the heartbeat of the earth, the knob
We could turn? The magical tree we could put back in the rain forest?
Can you count the number of women sold to slavery we could wrap  
In warm cotton and bring back home? 
Riding an idea is like riding the wind
Unless we harness its lonely tumult, unless we give the fruits
Of the earth to open mouths and aching stomachs.
We are the rain on the cold hungry dog in the streets of Chile,
The disfigured man in prison, the mass deaths in Bosnia.
We are the shame of the soldier who thought he should
Die instead of his buddy. We are the broken clock of
The widows of war, their last dreams filled with absence.
If we are the ones who do not feed, comfort or save--
We are the grave.                                         

​Grace Cavalieri is Maryland's tenth Poet Laureate. She's founder/ producer of "The Poet and the Poem" on public radio ,celebrating 44 years on-air, now produced at the Library of Congress. Her new poetry book is The Secret Letters of Madame de Stael (Goss pub. 2021).

Hunger
 
Imagine the hungry
gathering late into the night
at the dumpster                   
behind Food Lion,
harming no one 
                            
then wish for each one
the trash bin of Van Gogh,
or Picasso or Monet, 
the sketches and canvases
they threw away. 
 
 Michael S. Glaser
 
                   
 Passing By
 
He held out a cup
and I reached
for some coins.
 
He scowled. 
 
“I thought you wanted some bread,”
I said, certain he was going to ask
for more than this easy lint from my pocket.
 
I looked into his eyes and suddenly
felt ashamed that I lacked the courage 
to offer something his heart could chew on,
 
something from the warm oven
of my comfortable life, something
he might inhale deeply like oxygen,
some genuine bread for the journey –
each slice an offering
to sweeten his life again.
 
 Michael S. Glaser

Michael S. Glaser is a former Poet Laureate of Maryland from 2004 who has edited three anthologies of poetry, co-edited the Complete Poems of Lucille Clifton for BOA Editions, and published several award winning volumes of his own work, most recently, Threshold of Light with Bright Hill Publishing (2019).    More at www.michaelsglaser.com

Hunger
 
Hunger for that which ought to be,
hunger for the blade of heaven,
the hedge of corn, the field of wheat,
the hand that reaches out to give,
and plant, and share, the root, the seed
of fertile ground, and quiet soil,
the face of love and common grace.
 
Cliff Bernier

Here is another poem by Cliff on PoetryXHunger website: https://www.poetryxhunger.com/now-more-than-ever-submitted-poems/poem-by-clifford-bernier

Author of three books and two CDs, Clifford Bernier is a member of the Washington Writer’s Collection and has appeared on NPR’s The Poet and the Poem from the Library of Congress.  He lives in Northern Virginia.  ​

Property Rights
 
We watch them on the news after supper,
the families made destitute by guns and fire,
whole villages fleeing torture and rape.
 
We observe them in health centers
as they cradle infants turned to bone,
as adult bodies wither, sag and stumble.
 
George Orwell down and out got it partly right.
He wrote, It is fatal to look hungry.
It makes people want to kick you.ᴵ
 
Kicking is fear expressed in hate and blame,
in the sense there’s not enough.
that our bellies too could flap like theirs,
hanker every hour for crusts.
 
Our greatest fear is lest we forget
to forget that we too are mortal,
that one day, sooner, later,
we too wither, stumble, die.
 
We prefer not to know that the luxuries
of our living—our money, homes and treasures--
are but arbitrary gifts of grace.
We do not own our bodies, let alone our stuff.
 
Accepting fully that I will die liberates me
from the urge to kick. But the next step
is the hardest: to feel free to share my supper
with the hungry, as though it were my last.
 
Linda Ankrah Dove
July 25, 2018
 
i George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London, 1933

Click on the file below to listen to Linda read her poem:

​Linda Ankrah-Dove’s career in development in the poorest countries of Africa and Asia inspires many of her poems. Her first book, "Borrowed Glint of Jade", was just published!