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Atrophy in Madaya, Syria The grandmother refuses morning meal today and yesterday. Again tomorrow. The young ones must have more in their bowls she says. The bag of rice flops over, level of bulgar falls. She ceases eating, moves only in planned ways. Two neighbors die, the ribs of her grandchildren are outlined in flesh. Kwashiorkor, I have to look it up, hear it pronounced, until I remember pictures of children from Biafra, Vietnam, the Holocaust, this famine and that, further back than cameras. Images show flies on their faces, swollen bellies, listless people who wasted, vanished. The moon in daytime spirals across the sky, little noticed. Click on the file below to listen to Martha read her poem: 
 Martha E. Snell's poetry appears in or is forthcoming from journals such as Ninth Letter, Moon City Review, Cutthroat, The Poet's Billow, and Streetlight Magazine. She received the Mary Jean Irion Prize from Chautauqua Literary Arts Friends in 2015 and was a finalist for the 2015 Bermuda Triangle Prize (The Poet's Billow) and the 2019 Patricia Dobler Poetry Award. A professor emeritus at University of Virginia's Curry School of Education, she earned an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2015 and has since completed two residencies at the Vermont Studio Center. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
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For The Students For 60,000 On Their First Trip to Nicaragua For Pete White, and all those students. They got off the plane stuffed with good intentions ready to change lives make bricks build houses teach lessons feed the hungry The trash from the last of their snacks disposed of responsibly. Next stop was after the bumpy unpredictable ride. The expectations of primitive conditions, unfamiliar places to relieve their bodies, rest their heads, Unfamiliar cooks, bellies used to plenty, met by very excited children. One weary traveler remembered there was one more snack in her bag. She pulled out two oranges. The ones she had been saving for herself. such a sad offering for the small group. Before she could make a decision one spirited boy grabbed one. She watched open mouthed as he painstakingly peeled back the covering, carefully dividing this juicy treasure among ten. She wasn’t hungry after that. ©2021 Linda Trott Dickman Click on the file below to watch the video: 
The Hands That Prepared It For Priscilla Drake Solomon For all those for whom a crust is a feast She started from a full heart. Mixed all the elements Kneaded, working her floured quilters hands Into the dough, folding shaggy into smooth Sticky into soft. Working into a promising mound Covering with a cotton shroud, Letting the dough ferment Reshaping, Dividing, cross sectioned Tucked into bundles anointing with butter Cover once more Rise again like Easter morning. Bake, remove from oven deliver with warm wishes kind words. A starter for so much more. Click on the file below to listen to Linda read the poem:
For all those still seeking a good meal in the dust. If the chicken knew what lifted her, she could not say, strutting in the sun, looking for food, then propelled across the farm into the dark. 1. Incredible luck. A murky tidal wave crashed across the plain. I saw it coming, closed all the shutters. It looked like the judgment, dark powdery angry rolls, rushing toward me. My defense as effective as my six year old fighting to bite a thin carrot with two front teeth missing. A rust colored film breaking in to the smallest crack, the slimmest crevice, coating everything. The winds sixty miles an hour or more. I was grateful my Billy was in school, they had a storm cellar. I got that call before the cacophony of the heavens. The sky now the color of melting Baker's dark chocolate. And then it was over. I heard the cluck and looked twice; there stood a plump white Leghorn wearing a rusty coat. Dinner! Family too thin, eating the last of the root vegetables. A miracle! The chicken looked dazed, I wasted no time. It was a job lifting my eyelids, lifting my arms was easier. The dust gave me an edge, a better grip on the twiggy legs. 2. He heard it too. Hungry, out of work, on the road for days, he started past the house he needed water, he needed food. He saw the hulk of dust approaching, ran for the barn. This farm had nothing more than he had left behind. Undetected he climbed aloft Listening to what sounded like a dump truck was loosing its load overhead. He waited till the soil stopped raining down. When it ceased, he heard it. A surprised cluck. He would have kept going, but for that promising sound. He heard the pursuit, the capture the final strangled cluck, then the danse macabre in the yard; wings extended, legs in a great hurry, rushing nowhere, covering ground she had never covered in life. He watched the woman drain, pluck, sing. He heard “as I went down in the river to pray” coming from the kitchen. I put the pot on to boil, “studying about that good old way.” Chicken baptized, rinsing the storm off the last of the turnips, onions, carrots, parsnips. Peeling and singing, “and who shall wear the starry crown, oh Lord show me the way.” He waited. “Oh Lord show me the way.” she moved a basket of laundry out to the line, the last of the elephantine cloud lumbering away. Shaking the residue loose from the line, I lifted the sheets, towels knowing it would be tomorrow's refrain, “oh sinners lets go down lets go down, come on down down in the river to pray.” I smiled for the first time in days. He whistled soundlessly, picking up the air... By the time I returned, more than the storm had blown by the chicken the pot gone, though he'd had the courtesy to turn off the stove. If the chicken knew what lifted her, she could not say, strutting in the sun, looking for food, then propelled across the farm into the dark. Click on this LINK to listen to Linda read her poem.  Linda Trott Dickman has been writing poetry since her first sleep-away camp experience when she was ten years old. Linda is the author of Robes, The Air That I Breathe and Road Trip. Linda’s poetry has been published on-line, in Pratik Journal and in several anthologies. She is the current coordinator of poetry for the Northport Arts Coalition (Northport, NY.), has taught poetry to children for over 35 years and leads a poetry workshop for adults at Samantha’s Li’l Bit O’ Heaven coffee house in East Northport, NY.
FAMINE . . . the body is dyed by illness like a piece of cloth by an extraneous color. —W.G. Sebald The dyer makes the linen a deeper color of dug earth, boils it in water with acacia until the natural mole’s-back gray-tan becomes peat-bog purple. The well-fed lord is not pleased with the linen’s new color and wants it changed back. The dyer replies that once a beginning unfolds, recovery of what was is not possible. And he feels helpless walking home that night to his beyond-hungry child. On a cot she lies fevered, her hair fallen out, her mouth without saliva. Transports come by every evening to gather the dead, and they jostle over the river to a far-from-town field, where blackened by illness tubers also rest. The dyer lies down next to his daughter, and while she sleeps, he tries to solve the undyeing of a piece of cloth. from Anne Harding Woodworth, Up From the Root Cellar, Cervena Barva Press, 2006 Click on the link below to listen to Anne read her poem: https://www.dropbox.com/s/96j6z8srj1rrsg8/Woodworth%E2%80%94Famine.m4a?dl=0  Anne Harding Woodworth, author of
a sixth book of poetry, The Eyes Have It, with a seventh, Trouble, coming in late 2020. Famish On the starving plate you filled a hungry heart with empty food and left a hunger. You served up soup instead of sympathy, your way to say what still left a hunger. You baked a bridge of bread that just revealed what you could not cross; it left a hunger. You offered roast beef that never appeased a craving for words, which left a hunger. You wrote letters with your meals, meant to speak your silence. Unsent, they left a hunger. Your dazzling dishes did not nourish; feast turned to endless fast that left a hunger. In stillness, as you passed the salt and we ate our détente, I was left a hunger. Click on the file below to hear Eileen read the poem:
 Eileen Trauth is an author, inclusion advocate and Emeritus Professor of Information Sciences & Technology at Pennsylvania State University. She has published ten nonfiction books, many articles and one play. Her creative writing includes poetry, historical fiction and screen writing. She lives in Cincinnati, Ohio. www.eileentrauth.com
Almuerzo in the summer heat halted by an insolent red stoplight I see a man sitting on his haunches on the opposite curb of the t-bone intersection compact dark and round-eyed cradling a lunch on his knees as solemn spoon rises to solemn lips solemn as a state dinner the curb a timeless throne within an anthem of silence an island in the roar of the world a feast of rice and beans no doubt fit for both fisherman and pharoah spoon rises and dives like a bird of prey the cardboard bowl the living earth the serpent of hunger is driven away and won’t be back again today  Argos MacCallum is an actor, director, carpenter, theatre manager, and co-founder of Teatro Paraguas, a bilingual theatre company promoting Latinx plays in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He has lived the past 50 years in his homestead in the shadow of the Cerrillos Hills off the Turquoise Trail outside Santa Fe, where the coyotes party all night long.
Listen to these powerful poems by Naima Penniman, program director of Soul Fire Farm. As written by Naima: "This is poem I wrote and performed that speaks to hunger: These Gardens Are Blueprints Video: https://youtu.be/KcL1wlC7-rM Here are 2 other poems you might enjoy: Being Human - Mama Nature's mirror Video: https://youtu.be/EdMHqjN4Wtw Black Gold tells some U.S. history of the food system and land justice through the voice of the soil."  |
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