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Dear Food Pantry Critic, When it is somebody else’s fault, You don’t have to do anything about it, And that is hunger. When it is somebody else, You don’t have to do anything, And that is hunger. Sister, you are one fine one to talk About hunger, about the food pantry Calling out for donors, calling out For sugar-free jam, as if That is all they called for. You say the fact is Sugar-free jam has nothing, No nutritional value at all. Since you have the food pantry To blame, you don’t know anything About hunger. Hunger. You don’t know anything About that bright spot jam-joy brings, About berries, how those jeweled beads Surprise sunlight, highlight A day’s forgotten face. You don’t know anything at all About hunger.  A Ph.D. student concentrating in Integrative STEM Education at Virginia Polytechnic and State University, Mattie Quesenberry Smith is an English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies instructor at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia, and at Blue Ridge Community College, Weyer’s Cave, Virginia. She is also a writer. Her recent work has appeared in Tupelo Press’s 30/30 Anthology, Dappled Things, Dark Matter, Driftwood Press, Floyd County Moonshine, The Red Earth Review, and The Timberline Review. She lives at the foot of Little House Mountain in Lexington, Virginia.
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Mulberries When the white mulberries ripen on the tree in my backyard, how do the birds know that the time is ripe for picking? Does the tree beckon? Does one alert starling or grackle tell the others? Do the mulberries send out their scent to the rain, on the breeze? Such abundance, the berries dance with the green leaves until most disappear into the beaks of baby birds fed on this springtime plenty, soon gone. Be like the tree. When you have plenty, plenty to share, do it now, in season, while the fruit is ripening. Don't wait until the sun and wind say "dry up"! Don't wait for a better time than now.  Elizabeth Stanley served as president of Berks Bards, a non-profit poetry group in Reading, PA. She hosted the annual Bard Fest each April, established in 1998. Elizabeth produced and hosted the Bruce Stanley Memorial Poetry Series at Reading Area Community College, sponsored by the Foundation for RACC, from 1998 to 2017. Her poems have been published in Fledgling Rag, Iris G. Press, and in The Sexuality Poems, FootHills Publishing.
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