Hunger
​
I was born in the City of Dead
and died in the River of Children.
I am the infant smashed on the wall.
The kitchen is verboten!
The killers are insatiable for kalashnikovs.
Peshmerga, blood chief, my father.
Gulag, my mother, dirt soup.
I am yellow fever’s young boy
run wild in poppy fields,
scorched. My broken finger,
am I to blame? My little cowlick?

The Truculent Visitor
© 7/1/2022, J. Joy “Sistah Joy” Matthews Alford

He paid me a visit again today.
Didn’t knock on the door
Or ring the bell.

Just came right in.
Made himself at home.
I tried to extend the courtesy of politeness

Despite his rude rumbling sounds.
Asked if he had someplace else he needed to be.
Surely he could see my fine table setting.

I had plans …was expecting guests.
But he, who had no use for such fantasies,
Reached up, snatched my delicate doilies

And linen napkins right off the table.
Threw my fine china to the floor,
Then reached deep inside me.

Grabbed and twisted my gut
Filling me with searing pain
No living soul should ever have to know.

So here I sit on the floor
Between shards of shattered plates
Scattered beneath my trashed dining room table.

I glance into my kitchen at once-filled pantry shelves
And eye the equally empty refrigerator
While squeezing my arms around my grumbling waist.

Tears stream down my face
As I try to comprehend
How this has become my reality.

SUMMER

end of June, every year, our dining table was fragrant,
wet, on old newspapers a litter of linden flowers
the tea is soothing to the nerves, we were told
to ward off colds in the winter, for us kids
no one read the news those days...

promised for a future time,
in the kitchen, under mountains of sugar
sweet peaches boil the summer away.
on counters rows of empty jars, glistening clean
like winters, barren and harsh those days...

my grandfather’s tree was laden with red glory
its canopy opened wide over the neighbor’s yard
I’d climb and reach over the fence,
a scrawny kid along the rough bark.
I cherished that harsh embrace, no tomorrow
on the heavy branches, just me sharing the boon
my little brother doubtful, looking up,
his smile dripping cherries those days...

before the cold set in, every day,
we would make the line in the vegetable market
back then, each kid counted at food lines,
our makeshift cart waiting for us around the corner
us kids full of questions
why potatoes, why now
what will we say
is it 10 kg for 20 lei, or is it 20 kg for 10 lei
why do we have to whisper
why do we have to run
why are they chasing us

​linden trees still line our street
the years gone, the summers,
those days... promised away

Romania, 80’s

Control the Food, Control the War

Nazi boots stomping on floors:
control the food, control the war;

              keep them weak,
​              ​              keep them poor–

turn every orchard into forbidden fruit
authorized only for occupying troops.

Take away ​    the parachutes:
refuse school breakfast
​              ​              to destitute youth.
Give them riverwaters filled with lead,
leave them in food deserts–keep them unfed.

A hungry population is easy to control;
securing insecurity is the political goal.

Château d’Orquevaux is an artists’ residency set within an agricultural region of rural France, where during WWII, the Nazis had set up a command station.

On the Line

No amount of swiping
coaxed money from the card,
the card she insisted held $150.
The cashier, calm and kind,
tested the card over and over
until they had to agree:

no money no groceries.

The woman apologized
to the cashier,
to the line of customers,
a line that snaked halfway
down a long aisle,
no one huffing or puffing
or complaining
except to wonder why
only one register was open
on a late Monday morning.

I’m so embarrassed
her parting words.

The cashier flipped the belt switch.
The air fizzed again
with the buzz of business.
A woman next in line
asked the cashier
did that happen often.
First week of the month, he said,
the cards sometimes don’t work.

So this wasn’t just some credit card mishap.
This was a broken lifeline.

That must have been hard for you, I said
as I watched my credit card pass muster.
Patience, I’ve found the secret to patience,
the philosopher-cashier said,
don’t anticipate.
His reply not what I expected.

At home with cupboards restocked
my questions lingered:

What about the ones
who will go hungry tonight?
If I had been next in line,
could I have covered her bill?
Would I have?

This poem first appeared in MockingHeart Review.

BIO: Emily-Sue Sloane is an award-winning Long Island poet who writes to capture moments of wonder, worry and human connection. She is the author of a full-length poetry collection, We Are Beach Glass (2022), and a chapbook, Disconnects and Other Broken Threads (The Poetry Box, 2024). Her poetry has appeared in numerous print and online journals and anthologies. For more information, please visit EmilySueSloane.com

Hungry to Work

When you enter the job market your
salary is on par.
Your co-workers all scowl and stare in disbelief.

You move out of your parents’ home and into your own.
Sunday’s you start ordering KFC and watching football.
Soon the bills start coming in,
and you find yourself ordering from the
McDonald’s $1 section.

Your steady paycheck is deposited on the
1st and 15th,
but you must have a hole in your jean’s pocket.

A few years go by,
and your grocery cart is piled high with TV dinners,
but you have just gotten rid of cable.

Now a decade has passed,
you are now shopping at the discount grocery store,
placing can meats in your cart
trying hard not to gag.

​Still working and driving your 12.6-year-old car,
currently parked behind the church,
in line waiting for a bag of food for the week,
so you can focus on more than
the growl in your stomach.

​Walking ahead, I don’t see

Walking ahead, there are others, a blur of constant perpetual motion.
Each walking pass oblivious to the misery an alley hides, on the sunniest of days.

There, between good-times Reggie’s & Sal’s overflowing garbage bins line both sides, almost blocking the view, yet darkness calls out, nudging me to pause and look through.

Shriek loudly, as a skeleton of a man appears.
My gaze gravitates toward his grimy hands, dirt wedged between his wrinkles, and heavy clothes swallowing him in sorrow. He peers back, eyes tinged with yellow.

Frozen still between fear, curiosity, and pity--
A blend of emotions without a name, but I ask him, “What’s your name?”
The answer: “Euwan.”

We lock eyes, and I say, “Nice to meet you,”
but do not extend a hand, and he knows it. He sheepishly stares down at my Cole Haans,
we both linger as we know the next words
that will arrive.
Euwan on cue, asked, “You have a dollar to spare?”

I reach into my tan Ralph Lauren coat and hand him a twenty; he quickly grabs it. An impulse grips me to snatch it back, to run to the other side of the street, and take the elevator to the top
floor.
But I don’t, and I do not walk away but stay.

He begins grumbling to himself, preparing his assorted things in a kind of burlap bag. Steps into the light as if for the first time, sleep oozing from his eyes, and discharge lodged in their corners.
His hands shake as he fumbles to steady his bag.

He tips his hat, but I follow two-steps behind him
he knows that I am following, but he doesn’t look back, figuring I’ll trail off.
Something drives me to see where he’s headed,
Will it be as I figure, the closest liquor store?

A ghost among souls with holes, he roams.
Patting his pockets for a flask long emptied. Pacing wildly, waving to drifting whispers.
Abruptly halts and turns entering a Rite Aid.

I go to the other side and grab a newspaper, peer at the items he places on the counter:
Diapers, a soft toy, and formula.
I had imagined his age--

He looked very old, not a father, but a grandfather.
Now, more than ever, I attach myself to his shadows. He crosses the street, and waves to Sal,
returns back down the alley and huddles on the ground--
Where a young woman cradles a bundle.

I lean closer expecting to hear a baby’s cry, but what I find is even more baffling. It’s a duct-
taped clump of newspaper wrapped in a pink frayed blanket.
She fills the bottle with the formula, and proceeds to hum a beautiful lullaby.

I had to know why he would be so frivolous,
“Euwan, what’s going on? I gave you that money, so you could buy food.”
Euwan answers, “That’s Rebecca and a monster caused her to lose her baby.
That bundle is her light and joy, and I would do anything to extend that for her, so I play along.”

Euwan scratches at the grime on his sleeve, and frustratedly scoffs,
“Oh, what would you know? Some things you won’t understand—because you’ve never had to."

“Worked for 29 years, mortgaged 2 homes,
started losing my mind on some bad drugs;
wife took the dog out the back door,
once the law finally came in to evict me.
Lost the house... then the truck."

Suddenly, the air reeked with the stench of wealth, reservations, and valet. The guilt is
suffocating, and the urge to make things right is overpowering.

Over time, Cole Haans became loafers, and then to a pair of Converse, walking into the
nonprofit office site, providing care for all homeless within a 100-mile radius from the alley
where it all began.

On the office wall hangs the lifelong mantra,
"The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members."
~ Mahatma Gandhi

Aaliyah El-Amin is a poet based in Prince George’s, Maryland. She is the founder of the You Are Write Here collective, and her works showcase unique imagery and resilience, and are featured in both the Maryland Bards and Neopoets anthologies, Artists from Maryland, winner of funniest poem in The Rhyme On contest.
​

A Day of Hunger

He was faint with hunger.
I saw him on 2nd Avenue
and East Houston Street
that day when I was rushing
to meet a friend. The man
was sitting right in the street
looking at the strangers.

“All of us hunger for a reason,”
he spoke; he called me. “It’s
been a long time since I’ve eaten
some food, but I have my word,
man shall not live on bread alone,
but on every word that comes from
the mouth of… well, you know.”

I’ve heard his voice from far beyond,
I walked closer to him, I gave a dollar
and turned around and then he said:
“Thank you,” but he said strangely,
as if he was singing. I felt some softness
in his voice. “The misuse of language,”
he spoke. “Induces a great evil in us.”

“What?” I moved closer, knowing that
he wasn't talking about grammar it was
something else. “Maybe I’ll die soon,”
he spoke. “Maybe not, but to misuse
language is to use it the way the fools
do, without taking responsibility for
what the words mean.”

​I tried to see that man again, after meeting
with my friend, but he vanished, as if he
never was there. Who was he? What a day
it was, it was a day of hunger, swallowed
by the bizarre meaning of life, if life can be
described by words then there must be
some hope for nourishment either.

A Sudanese Phantom

I crossed the grand vastness
          between my grave and your doorstep.
I passed your glass palaces:
          solemn monuments to Mammon.
I glided upon fiber optic webs:
          cords caring pulses of lies.
I’ve heard all the growling of Man
          in the throats of blood-mongers.

I declare ‘Shame!’
          Shame! Shame! Shame!
Yes, I’ve seen many shameful things
          yet there are absences in my findings.
I find no empty storehouses here;
          no salted farming soil,
          no shortage of full fridges
          in this land where excess is exegesis.

So, I desire an honest show of hands:
          Who among you has ever
          actually
          ​starved?

On the Oreo

It lies in wait like a cockroach on my counter, indestructible,
Evolutionary titan, alien artifact, blue wrapper,
Black and white graphic, imprinted since infancy,
One fourth of a day’s calories in six bites, Big Food love child.

It was a pity buy off a brown-skinned, mute mother
Surfing the subway with her box of stale treats.
Blasting from the next car, babe wrapped to her chest,
Her passage crafted us a sandwich

Of annoyance/anguish/annoyance, choking complacency.
I resist looking. I imagine myself
She beseeches but only with her hungry eyes
As she sways to the world’s harsh rhythms.

Has no one told her these plastic treats are toxic?
A class of people living behind their walls,
To which I too often aspire, won’t touch these brands.
While for those living outside such walls, they’re just another day.

When did my favorite after-school treat, so perfect
With a glass of milk or Kool Aid, become a brick in that wall?
Once the only controversy was whether to bite down as is,
Or split, lick and chew. Bible School was riven by the question.

Or there’s the taunt of racial sincerity,
“She’s just an Oreo.” That caustic metaphor chimes
Sharply off the world’s most popular cookie,
First engineered in New York’s Chelsea Market

Before its later heydays of trans hookers,
Drug dealers and now Google. No longer
Made in the USA. Contains a bioengineered food ingredient.
Trans fats or not, here it is, badged and blue, in my kitchen.

​A glass of milk. My little brother and me,
Breathless after our games. We each take three,
Dividing the package equally, as we do our chores.
Oh, blue devil, if I thought I’d die tomorrow, you’d be my last.

School Lunch

Amorphous pink bagged milk
And a burger patty
Unlike McDonald’s, no Big Mac for your father
Your eyes are table level, and the chairs are blue
And it folds in two

Tin can, cut sausage, fried egg
Lunch monitor puts her hand down like a clamp
Shush, shush, walk in line
Fingers to your lips
Milk is 35 cents
Your silver dollar coin comes from the pink bank
Tall as you, but hollow inside

Trade a tater tot and a couple of fries
For a Garfield comic
Eat a hot dog out of context
Or a milky sandwich in old restaurant foil
Envy the cornbread and the cowboy bread
Find out later you could have had it for free

Collect the violin backstage
Scrape the cake off cardboard
Best you’ve ever tasted
Pizza party, but you’re also not invited

Eat perfect fries for a dollar
With a self-proclaimed hacker
Cut a Hot Pocket with a fork after the towers fall
Split a hoagie, but begrudgingly
No sandwich ever tastes as good after that

Greasy burgers, soft serve, hot cookies
Listen to Avril every morning
Get your PE credit out of the way
First Starbucks, taquitos in the hallway
Braid your hair like Kylie at the Brit Awards

Sunday roast, steal a pie
Eat all the cereal, Texas waffles
Breakfast tacos and bad coffee
Pepperoni rolls from the vendor
Starbucks, Starbucks, Chipotle

Eat everything at once
And then you don’t eat at all