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BOGEYMAN Haiku I heard it again! The monster under the bed. I scream at my stomach STOP!  P.S. Perkins, a past Director of the Poets on the Green Line as a "spin off" from the globally recognized Writer's on the Greenline. Relocating back to SD in 2023, P.S. is starting an Oral Arts Program in the schools through her work as a Master Storyteller and Founder and Chief Creative Officer of the Human Communication Institute. She continues to write DAILY because every day begins with word! Be true to your word because it will be true to you!
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I Have Never Experienced Hunger not the hunger that lingers for days and blinds the mind to possibilities the yard was brimming in guayabas, passionfruit and plantains for the taking and chickens laid eggs… the sun was strong and the rains reliable, there were no insect collapse and pollination happened though hurricanes still threatened their vicious cycles no one saw coming, but not as many not like the test of now with the ocean rising and the corals bleaching and guns blocking trucks full of grain while fields burn as food shrivels spoils and molds in waste lands appetites everywhere expanding and yet I wonder why i feel this yearning this gnawing, this unrelenting crave  Amelia Díaz Ettinger is a BIPOC poet and writer. Her experiences as a Mexican-Puerto Rican inform her writing and her search for what it means to be living in these times.
MY FATHER IN HEAVEN ON YOM KIPPUR My Father has lived in Heaven for what seems like an eternity On earth he was a good man He gave food to the hungry In Heaven he is a good man still But he has no food to give In Heaven there is no time There only is It is always now And now, in Heaven Yom Kippur is My Father is a good man Because it is Yom Kippur he enters the synagogue of Heaven He is fasting. It seems he has been fasting forever Nor does he take even one drop of water to ease his thirst My Father feels the gnawing of hunger in his belly—the rasping in his throat the pounding in his head There is thunder, There is fire The heavens are howling In Heaven there is no time Yom Kippur in Heaven is now The Heavenly congregation is huge — innumerable— the men, in the men’s section draped in their heavenly blue and white prayer shawls their heads, covered against the pain of their hunger their deep pain-filled voices chanting in unison they rock and bow and moan We have sinned We have sinned We have sinned With clenched fists they are pounding their hearts They are praying to the tune of the hunger of the world They pray for the end of hunger They pray for the life of the one who is starving Of the masses —- innumerable-- who are starving whose bellies are bloated whose skins thin as paper whose eyes, still living, are growing dim My Father is feeling the pain of their starving The Heavens resound with the pain of their hunger Until they are fed the sun will not set on Yom Kippur in Heaven This poem first appeared in the Bards Against Hunger 10 Year Anniversary Anthology in 2023. Click to hear the poet read the poem.  Joan Dobbie of Eugene, Oregon, born in Switzerland of Holocaust survivors, has a 1988 MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Oregon. Joan is president of the Emerald Literary Guild in Eugene, co-hosts the WINDFALL reading Series and for nearly a decade co-hosted the River Road Reading Series (RRRS). She has been writing, teaching and publishing poetry, stories and Life Histories since 1981, has two well-grown children and six grands, ages 13-20. She teaches Hatha Yoga at the U of O and through the River Road Parks District.
How Can I Speak About Hunger? (a pantoum) A mother stands, draped in starving children On a road in an endless desert. To buy food, an old woman chops branches from A tree older than she is. A mother stands, draped in starving children While a farmer drops seeds into dusty furrows beneath A tree older than she is. Who will feed the children and water the seeds? While a farmer drops seeds into dusty furrows, Thundering guns drown the crying children and hissing vultures. Who will water the seeds and feed the children? What can be harvested from such a crop? Thundering guns drown the crying children and hissing vultures. Ships listlessly bob at anchor, food rotting in their holds. What can be harvested from such a crop? Who holds the power to stop the guns and feed the hungry? Not the farmer in his field, Not the old woman gathering wood, Not the starving Madonna. How can I speak about hunger? This poem first appeared in The Pendemic Journal: Hunger Issue, June 2024  Janice F. Booth is a writer and educator living near the Chesapeake Bay. Her long-running garden column and published poems reflect Jan’s reverence for Nature in varied guises. Jan’s poetry is included in The Song In the Room: Six Women Poets, The Antioch Poetry Retreat: a Gathering of Poets, The Road Beneath Our Feet and periodicals, including S/He Speaks, photospecchio, Silk Road Blog, and Avocet. As a journalist she authored Crofton: Images of America.
FILLING THE CART Do they still love re-fried beans? Mangoes? I sort through the produce shelf, pineapple that could catch me with its spikes. My grandsons, buckled in, make their way toward me at 600 miles an hour, my son on my radar like freeze-dried fruit on the list he sent me, fruit extracted of all its water—what we’ll eat when we have to escape this planet for outer space. Didn’t see him for a year and a half during lockdown. I wheel the items he asked for, up and down the aisles, searching out gefilte fish he snacked on in high school, and more berries than the fridge drawers can hold, the crop he hopes he’ll still have in his backyard after a frigid winter broke records, all manner of deli with rolls to tuck it into, sauce and cheese and peperoni for pizza the boys and I will make together—I hope they’ll eat if they cook it themselves. How much time is left to know them, know their lives? Every day when they leave for school so far away from me, I can’t help but think of the news and wonder if they’ll come home. This poem first appeared in The Pendemic Journal: Hunger Issue, June 2024  Margot Wizansky’s poems have appeared in many journals such as: Missouri Review, Poetry East, Quarterly West, Potomac Review, American Literary Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Cimarron Review, Salamander, and Ruminate. She edited the anthologies: Mercy of Tides: Poems for a Beach House, Rough Places Plain: Poems of the Mountains, and What the Poem Knows, A Tribute to Barbara Helfgott Hyett, her teacher. She won the Writers@Work Poetry Fellowship in Salt Lake City and Carlow University’s Patricia Dobler Prize, residency in Sligo, Ireland, at the Isle of Innisfree. She transcribed the oral history of her friend, Emerson Stamps, whose grandparents were enslaved, and his parents, sharecroppers, called Don’t Look Them In The Eye: Love, Life, and Jim Crow. Wild for Life, her chapbook, was published by Lily Poetry Review, 2021. The Yellow Sweater was published by Kelsay Books, 2023.
THE OLD BEAR The old bear sleeps in a fetal trance beneath the rock ledge in the park. He dreams of fish flying in slow-motion and of a she-bear’s furry rump. Winter now done, he wakes up hungry, not for acorns, not for grubs. He wants that pizza you threw away, your daughter's leftover birthday cake. He knows the berries are better for him, but he covets that sharp, sweet sugar spike. The old bear pads through suburban sprawl, across the fairways and the dewy lawns, his moist nose raised to detect popcorn, microwave burritos and breaded fish sticks. His claws tinker with the gate latch; his paws knock down the recycling bin. He knows he doesn’t belong here; he should be back there in the woods, shredding the ant hill and licking up bugs, hunting the she-bear in the gooseberry bushes, scooping the sun fish from the river and holding it tight till the shiver stops. This will end badly, just like it did before, with the bloodied dog and the marinara vomit, but he can’t help himself; he has never known a greater thrill than the illicit prize: your ice cream carton tumbling from the toppled can and landing right at his feet. Baltimore, MD 5/28/14 Published in the Pendemics Journal No. 5, page 23, June, 2024 https://online.fliphtml5.com/ppypf/orhr/#p=24 THE ANT IN THE HONEY On the windowsill sits a mason jar of honey, where the sun struggles through the translucent amber, where an ant, betrayed by his own hunger, struggles to keep his head above the gluey lake. I unscrew the lid and dip the tip of a teaspoon to lift out the ant and crush him between two fingernails. “Stay out of my food,” I tell him, “and I’ll stay out of yours.” But now I find myself at the crossroads of my own hunger: The bathroom scale spins to a high number, but here in my right hand is a peanut-butter-covered biscuit that would taste so much better drizzled in honey. Baltimore, MD, 12/4/19 Unpublished  Geoffrey Himes’s poetry has been published by Best American Poetry, December, Redactions, Gianthology, the Loch Raven Review, Pendemics, Survision, Innisfree, Salt Lick, Cathexis Northwest, Gargoyle and other publications. His poems are included in the anthologies Baltimorology, Singing in the Dark and Poet Trees: Poetry Hiding in Plain Sight. His song lyrics have been set to music by Si Kahn, Walter Egan, Billy Kemp, Fred Koller and others. He has written about popular music for the Washington Post, New York Times, Rolling Stone, Smithsonian Magazine, Paste, Downbeat, Sing Out and No Depression since 1977.
The Famine That Follows We die not from fire but its quenching-- the flames set down, then a barrenness our tongues a thick bulb a memory of water our hungers hoarded in the throat we will fall upon each other with forks and fingers we will eat our very names This poem first appeared in "She-Giant in the Land of Here-We-Go-Again," MadHat Press, 2020. Fasting we’d drained the last splash of crude lamplight fizzled combines and threshers lay their claws down in the fields now to sleep so we mined the stars and finding nothing for us there dug into what we knew my body was the bread of my country we would not leave the village stayed indoors fed off our sweat was grass—insufficient green and we ate it cats were stewed in bowls we tried to live in our bodies’ smallest rooms at night the wind on the roof was animal we rooted for sustenance even among our family bed what we consumed could not be replaced a country plumbs it bones dips into marrow but there is no moon drags the lake but there is only dreaming in the end we foraged through the heaven stones in the end we ate the zoo This poem first appeared in "She-Giant in the Land of Here-We-Go-Again," MadHat Press, 2020.  Kristina Andersson Bicher is the author of She-Giant in the Land of Here-We-Go-Again (MadHat Press 2020) and Heat, Sob, Lily (forthcoming MadHat Press 2025), as well as the translator of Swedish poet Marie Lundquist’s full-length collection I walk around gathering up my garden for the night (Bitter Oleander Press 2020).
Kristina’s poetry appears in such literary journals as AGNI, Ploughshares, Hayden’s Ferry, Plume, Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, and Narrative. Her translations and nonfiction have appeared in The Atlantic, Brooklyn Rail, Harvard Review, Asymptote, and Writer’s Chronicle, among others. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. The Flour Massacre February 29, 2024 Imagine fighting for flour. Not bread, not rice, not chicken crisped like a golden beach encrusted with salt and herb – flour. Bags of flour. Bags of flour and you are waiting in line. And there are only so many bags of flour. What will you do with it? Will you feed the horse so it will carry you away from here? Will you feed the cow so the milk will grow back your limbs? Will you feed your son so he will carry somewhere your name? Imagine. Imagine reaching for flour only to be met with a bullet. Imagine reaching for the bullet to swallow into your own stomach. Imagine. Imagine.  Ishanee Chanda is a prose writer and poet from Dallas, Texas. She is the author or two books of poetry titled "Oh, these walls, they crumble" and "The Overflow." Ishanee currently resides in Washington, D.C. where she works full-time in the field of humanitarian aid and refugee response. She enjoys playing badminton in the summer, singing loudly to Taylor Swift, and spending time in Brookland with her little family.
This Much This much wine could leave me drunk. This much milk could feed an infant for a day. This much water could save a man’s life. This much seed could feed a farmer in need. This much warmth could stave off winter’s cold. This much shade could keep a migrant alive This much quiet could be the beginning of peace. It wouldn’t take much. We could do so much, with only this much, only this much. With only this much we could save the world, if only we would. This poem first appeared in Poetry Lovers.  Marti is a West Coast native, living in the San Francisco Bay area. She comes from a family of social activists and writers. She is interested in nurturing community and connection through the Dharma and writing. Her heart lives in the woods.
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