Poetry X Hunger
  • Home
  • Art Auction to Alleviate Hunger
  • Hunger Poetry
    • Hunger Poems
    • World Food Day Poetry Competition >
      • 2021
      • 2020
      • 2019
      • 2018
    • Maryland Poets
    • International Poets
  • About
    • About the Initiative
    • Initiative Founder
    • Advisory Board
  • News & Blog
  • Young!
    • Poems by Young Poets
    • Videos
    • Materials for Teachers
  • Library
    • Extent of Hunger >
      • Global Hunger: Progress & Challenges
      • Hunger in the US
    • Historic Accounts of Hunger >
      • Africa
      • The Americas
      • Asia
      • Europe and Russia
    • Historical Poems
    • Interviews
    • Recent highlights
  • Contact/Submit/Take Action
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Call to Action
    • Resources & Donations >
      • Global resources
      • US resources
      • Maryland resources

Hunger Poems

You are encouraged to read the poems posted here and elsewhere on the

Poetry X Hunger website, to look  
at 
the historic accounts of hunger,

famine and starvation, or consider the ​prompts suggested and then...

​write some poetry about hunger.
 

Poems by Brian Manyati aka Towandah Ryan

2/15/2023

0 Comments

 
"Food inflation"

Ours ain't hunger pains after a bumper harvest
Lately, twisted fate forced a wrong turn on us
Tilling farmland suspended, a dark cloud had engulfed us
Missiles that time never told were coming, fell like the monsoon rains
Announced wasn't a tranquil break but
fight or fright or flight
Iron hoes had clobbered head to head in the fields
Sirening a so abrupt shift of activity.

May you not say we got bread shortage on the table from nil supply
Rather say, wheat scarcity was our own stitching
Shot down was our willing and able bread winner's promise
To feed nations out of a comparative advantage and nothing else.

Say ours was a taxing choice that traded ploughshares for swords
One more time, kept up gun barrels oiled with toxic sharpness
Amarment sharpness recklessly gunning down our wonderland wheat farmer
Now we are left with even the smallest rivers claiming that they are seas!

May you not say we got bread shortage on the table from nil supply
Rather say, our wheat scarcity was our own shortfall
Than breach masculine desires, we went showboating power -- existent or not
Say that our inflated ego has kept fortunes waning

With this warring,
Food prices have sky rocketed like an erupting Mauna Loa volcano
With this warring,
Displaced are many many families from food access,
worse the physically vulnerable.

"Dearest ID mom"

Mom is out on the road and in the open
Temporarily she's christened an Internally Displaced Person
This naming may however, turn out the most unkind to her
Should things end at the wondrous thought effort, phrasing alone than helping out
It becomes a special class tag, lacking on inclusivity than it alleviates her hope.

Mom needs both food for thought and swallowship, not only fellowship.
Unlike immigrant Miriam in a full camp freeing from bondage
Hers is isolated movement out of decent community shelter into a slum if unluckiest.

Mom is far placed on the priority list at this rate conjured by fate.
When will mom earn a right to no trespass of lands she possesses as a passer by?
Like it is with nomadic pastoralism, won't her gains of flock along the way be exhausted through
bartering for the so called staple?
Let's face it, can a nomad woman own own farmland?
Is it not her stomach too is entitled to staple?

Mom probably is gone for days without relief tent,
Parks are full so they say, try next and next.
Today her random displacement is by floods, cyclone Idai if not hurricane Katrina.

Yesterday by an Act of regional development to please any a promising investor
Tomorrow, it is her fleeing conflict of the Mfecane sort.

Mom is in the home and hungry, mom is out on the road and in the open much hungrier
If survival with child depends on food handouts, what if there is none?
Mom is a "GOAT" caught up in between a hard place and a rock
Our attention to detail on the degrees of vulnerability better be not an end in itself.

By Brian Manyati aka Towandah Ryan
tawandamanyati@gmail.com
+263772 815 211
Picture
​A poet under VaChikepe and The Hundred Sailors, a poetry music and arts ensemble from Zimbabwe 🇿🇼. Also a Chartered Governance Professional professional.

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Suggestions & Ideas

    Take a look at some of the writing prompts to get inspired!

    Archives

    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    December 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    July 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    May 2019

    Poets

    All
    A.G. Kawamura
    Anne Harding Woodworth
    Argos MacCallum
    Blair Ewing
    Brenda Bunting
    Brian Manyati Aka Towandah Ryan
    C.C. Arshagra
    Christopher T. George
    Cliff Bernier
    Debbi Brody
    Dee Allen
    Don Hamaliuk
    Dorothy Lowrie
    Ed Zahniser
    Eileen Trauth
    Elise Power
    Emily Vargas-Barón
    Eric Forsbergh
    Evan Belize
    Gayle Lauradunn
    Glynn Axelrod
    Grace Beeler
    Grace Cavalieri
    Heather Banks
    Holly Wilson
    Jay Carpenter
    Jay Carson
    Jefferson Carter
    Jeffrey Banks
    Joan Dobbie
    J R Turek
    Judy Kronenfeld
    Julie Fisher
    Kalpna Singh-Chitnis
    Kari Gunter-Seymour
    Kathamann
    Kim B Miller
    Kitty Cardwell
    Kitty Jospé
    Laura McGinnis
    Linda Dove
    Linda Trott Dickman
    Lindsay Barba
    Lisa Biggar
    Lynn Axelrod
    Margaret Brittingham
    Martha E. Snell
    Michael Glaser
    Michael Minassian
    Milton Carp
    Naima Penniman
    Nan Meneely
    Naomi Ayla
    N Chamchoun
    Philip Harris
    Robbi Nester
    Robert Fleming
    Ron Shapiro
    Sharon Anderson
    Sherrell Wigal
    T. A. Niles
    T.A. Niles
    Theresa Richard
    Tom Donlon
    Vickisa
    Vincent J Calone
    V.j.calone
    William Rivera
    Zane Yinger

    RSS Feed

Copyright PoetryXHunger 2022


Search the website:

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • Art Auction to Alleviate Hunger
  • Hunger Poetry
    • Hunger Poems
    • World Food Day Poetry Competition >
      • 2021
      • 2020
      • 2019
      • 2018
    • Maryland Poets
    • International Poets
  • About
    • About the Initiative
    • Initiative Founder
    • Advisory Board
  • News & Blog
  • Young!
    • Poems by Young Poets
    • Videos
    • Materials for Teachers
  • Library
    • Extent of Hunger >
      • Global Hunger: Progress & Challenges
      • Hunger in the US
    • Historic Accounts of Hunger >
      • Africa
      • The Americas
      • Asia
      • Europe and Russia
    • Historical Poems
    • Interviews
    • Recent highlights
  • Contact/Submit/Take Action
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Call to Action
    • Resources & Donations >
      • Global resources
      • US resources
      • Maryland resources