|
ABOUT HUNGER A poem about hunger Is not one of awe, not one of wonder This thing that grows Below, Inside Reflects, Of need Denied A painful thing to see A wretched thing to be In hunger A darkness Sharp, clawing at ones’ being The lungs, the heart Messing with the reasoning of the mind The hope The emptiness that rises To the throat Choking on water Offering appeasement to the belly Releasing unrelenting anguish In a language called despair The weariness that is telling The aching, the swelling The deadly devastation That stalks in starvation The extreme Muffled muted screams It cries, it sobs It whimpers in its’ call The distance The fierce, intense, insistence Of the sustenance one needs Shows Hunger is an enemy to us all Like the falling of darkness gives rise to gloom and doom Its’ darker and darker and darker and darker and… © 2018 Brenardo  Brenardo aka Andre’ B. Taylor, is a native Washingtonian poet and songwriter. He has been writing for over five decades on all matters of life. His written words have been featured in countless newspapers, magazines, and poetry anthologies, and he is a veteran of stage, radio, and television, and United States Navy who believes in being of service to the word which graces him to help others.
2 Comments
Salty Growls By Chip Williford A full plate of hunger Pain fills my belly Salty Growls Snapping fast Eats all desire Placed before me Lacking Substance An outdated menu nourishing depression leaving nothing else  Chip Williford is a prose, poetry, and short story writer, equal rights advocate and activist, filmmaker, documentarian, family historian, good listener, and relatable storyteller. He co-host Poetry Street “The Room Without A Roof”, with Maggie Bloomfield.
www.poetrystreetontheroad.com Carol and I used to volunteer at a "soup kitchen,” except that instead of soup, they served breakfast on Saturday mornings. This poem, from my book Celebrations ©2014, is an ode to the chef we had at that kitchen. —Bill Batcher The Spatula Man Where do folks go when Hunger keeps calling, and Fickle Miss Fortune has Left them in the lurch? They head for the weekly Saturday morning Soup Kitchen Breakfast In the basement of the church. Here they can find a Hot cup of coffee and Warm friendly faces, and Eat all they can Of eggs and sausages Pancakes and home fries, All from the grill of The Spatula Man! The Spatula Man! The Spatula Man! It's all from the grill of The Spatula Man! Lots of people volunteer To help with breakfast: Serve cups of coffee, Fill bowls of flakes, Butter the bagels, Wash down the tables, Sweep, mop and do Whatever it takes. They say that it's their Just Christian duty. "We feel we oughta Do what we can." Who are they kidding? They really come to admire The exceptional talent of The Spatula Man! The Spatula Man! The Spatula Man! Oh, the culinary talents of The Spatula Man!  After retiring as an elementary school teacher, Dr Batcher turned to poetry. His four books of poetry, plus a historical book about his ancestors' involvement in the Civil War, are all available on Amazon. Each morning, he posts a poem on Facebook.
The Wind El hambre viene, el hombre se va. . . . —Manu Chao If hunger comes, then the man must go, an army-green pack on his sweat-slick back. He'll move with coyotes and not be attacked-- this fanciful reaper, whose father has sown scattered oats. When the plants fail to grow, when there's no land to plant, when the sack has been emptied, the dreamer makes tracks with hooves like a goat's, playing piccolo-- and, if you listen, a small violin. When hunger comes, there's a tremulous show. He'll balance the tightrope—we'll feel vertigo-- and land, swimmingly, on the head of a pin. But if he takes our bounty, he must go. Let him sing, let him row on the wind. *This poem originally appeared in Stone Canoe online and is in my sonnet collection, Diverting Angels. Deborah Diemont’s three books of poetry from Dos Madres Press are: Wanderer, Diverting Angels and The Charmed House. Her work has appeared in a variety of print and online journals, including The Evansville Review, The Texas Review and The Yale Review. She lives in Syracuse, New York.
The Answer is in the Waves of the Sea After the painting of the same name by Maria Cruz Palileo The dark-skinned fisherman poses by the shore. The sun’s sediments, its clouds, touch the ground, and mingle with the bright, bright womb-warm water. In this world, oceans are cloudy orange. We’ll never see bottom or even smooth stones, broken shells, and faded kelp at water’s edge. The fisherman takes fish on faith. The waves will give him the answer: silver darts that wriggle and gasp, fleshy ones that could pass for stones. The fisherman is gaunt, worn down by the sun that fattens flowers and fruit. He may have faith. He may find nothing in his net today. The waves will give him the answer he cannot live on. The answer he must accept. The one his wife rails against while his children cry. Of Small Stores in the City Our last morning we pass yellow and red stores that may soon be closing, even here, street of brick fortresses and check-cashers. These stores were a food desert’s oases. They may have sold meat and produce, in cans at least. We all ate canned fruit once. We still eat beans, rinsing off salt. Now these stores’ air is thick with pink candy, mold, mice. People buy lottery tickets, milk, cans of beer. Perhaps it always was that way.  Marianne Szlyk has always been fascinated by little grocery stores in city neighborhoods, some of which are food deserts. Her most recent book is Why We Never Visited the Elms (Poetry Pacific), which is available on Amazon. Her poems have appeared in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Poetry Breakfast, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and Verse-Virtual.
Why I Like Ketchup It’s hard to pay attention to what’s on the board, to care that three times seven is twenty-one, that our state bird is a robin or that I’m supposed to say isn’t, not ain’t. All I can think about is my empty belly, and the smell of boiling hot dogs. I’m so hungry, I hurt. It’s my favorite school-lunch day, though. The ʼdogs are good, but those little ketchup packages make it the best for me. I like the tiny crackers in cellophane bags when we have chili, too, but they get smashed up too fast. Ketchup packs travel better in my pockets. I take as many as I can get, before the lunch lady, Mrs. Penny, with that net thing on her head, gives me the eye. I have to put some back. She’s cool though. Sometimes she’ll slip me an extra apple, a bag of chips or a cookie, secret-like. My friend takes some extra ketchup packs for me, too. He knows I like them. He never asks me why. And I never tell him, ʼcause that hurts my belly, too. Mrs. Penny said once that some old white guy said ketchup was a vegetable. He sure was dumb even if he was the President. Even a third grader knows that ketchup comes from tomatoes and that tomatoes are fruit. I don’t know about mustard though. Maybe it’s a vegetable. Whatever it is, you can have it. On the bus home I open one ketchup packet. Squeezing the thick sweetness into my mouth, I let it sit a minute on my tongue before it slips and slides down my throat. Only one. That’s my rule ʼcause it’s getting near the end of the month. It’ll make supper taste better for me and Mama. All we’ve got left is stale bread that’s pretty hard to swallow and tomorrow’s Saturday.
Metabolic Memory When my stomach is so empty that it churns your name, I cover my mouth-only to realize that the sound is incontestable, coming from the depths of me. A guttural echo squeezing sad memories through kidneys, but no filtration system can distill you- or flush out the toxins. We are the science experiment gone terribly wrong, abandoned etch-a-sketch on trees, the Pandora's box I don’t dare open, hidden in the basement of my mind’s corridors. When my stomach is so empty that it churns your name, I begin to nibble on remnants of you. The times I thought I was in love with your Cheshire smile and angular nose, but I was really just dancing with my own darkest shadow, sinking the ship and biting the dust. I was only craving a cool glass of attention paired along with a heaping bowl of belonging. My stomach doesn't speak English, and thus I have become illiterate to its primal cries. Twists and knots of you are seeking some sort of indecipherable plea for an exit, an escape. Like closing the door with a heart trembling in the throat only to be picked off the branch. I was low hanging fruit, and you were the gardener. The snakes warned you not to pick me, but you did and now look at the mess behind us. I have become an arsonist, burning down the bridges we used to stroll on. My darling, I am no sweet apple, my core is bitter and skin tougher than steel. How you managed to seep in through the layered amour I could never understand. But you see, when my stomach is so empty it churns your name, and instead of feeding the fire inside of me, I vomit. Words on the page and paint to the canvas, flame to the match and foot through the door I run. And run and run and run, and just when my legs could splinter in half, I draw your profile in the dark with a frenzy of fireflies, over and over and over. I draw your profile until I can’t remember what you look like anymore. I draw your profile and the churning simmers; I draw your profile until you fizzle and fade from view. I run back to the place I once called home, and this time, when my stomach is so empty it churns for a different kind of love. One that might finally let me feel full. -A  Ashlynn is a multi-disciplinary artist, spoken word poet, and dreamer, who recently won 1st place as a finalist at the Guelph and Toronto Poetry Slams, and has several solo exhibitions around the GTA. Her work centres on the notion of humans as storytellers, by creating a sense of embodied art-making connected to the earth. For Ashlynn, art is a vehicle to transport, translate, and transform ideas of life, love, loss, and finding her voice through imaginative avenues.
Website: ashlynndoljac.format.com Instagram: @artistic_allegories Youtube: @ashlynndoljac1318 Fast If you were to ask me about hunger I would tell you it's like being held in empty arms for too long, purse strings tightened at the parched mouth drawn closed on unmet needs. Thirst is a dry river bed, a dead cricket's leg, trough of dust, fat snowflake uncaught by young tongues. And after the deep well no longer cares what it might hold, at the first bite, the first sip the animal need to take all not to taste, but to fill, not to quench, but to flow. But what do I know of real hunger, true thirst? If I could pack it up, I'd send it– the wasted corporate buffet, the bottled waterfall. I swear, I would send it to you. Fast, I'd fast.  Ellen Rowland is the author of two collections of haiku/senryu as well as the book Everything I Thought I Knew, essays on living, learning and parenting outside the status quo. Her writing has appeared in numerous literary journals and in several poetry anthologies, most recently The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy. Her debut collection of full-length poems, No Small Thing, is forthcoming from Fernwood Press in 2023. She lives off the grid with her family on an island in Greece. Connect with her on Instagram @rowland.ellen
Female Hunger in Brazil You strip our needs take away opportunities of who we want to be. Domestic jobs stripping our hands raw. So overworked, our calluses bleed in pleads to stop. But will that time ever come? The moment the day's work is finally done. More hours worked than any man could ever maintain in his thoughts, replaced by earnings worth no more than the dirt underneath our feet. 5 mouths to feed excluding me. How do you expect us to eat? Your system is poverty, leaving us vulnerable left to lean on men. Because in a life of “independence” where a woman can be the head of house, you bring us back down to the size of a mouse. How can we possibly dream of the places we’d like to be? Because you strip our needs take away opportunities of who we want to be. When all we’re trying to do, is eat. Works Cited Charles H. Wood & Erica Felker-Kantor (2013) The Color of Hunger: Food Insecurity and Racial Inequality in Brazil, Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, 8:3, 304-322, DOI: 10.1080/17442222.2013.797214 UC Davis undergrad studying International Agriculture Development
Instagram: @love.naomigrace The Price of a bite I just saw a little black girl stealing an apple from a grocer’s display deliciously arranged… a feast for the eye... I just saw a little black girl stealing an apple from a grocer’s display deliciously arranged… a feast for a child’s hungry eyes... I just saw a little black girl stealing an apple from a grocer’s display she took a desperate bite and in no time… the city’s police…surrounded her side... I just saw a little black girl stealing an apple which the law confiscated… …evidence…hunger… handcuffed… The terrified child did not cry… She did not belong to anyone... I just saw a little black girl so hungry…stealing an apple… she took a desperate bite now handcuffed at best hunger on her mind... Under arrest... To be punished…demoralized unable to run away… The apple lost its value The police executed…it’s the law... The child still hungry... The angry grocer threw the apple blemished with that desperate bite… into a garbage can… A church-going white grocery man… I saw his gilded cross on a golden chain... Afraid…threatened she might steal again… I saw a little black girl being hungry in America…. Once...I...was hungry malnutrition and TB searching the ruins of a devastated Germany... A war child…fingers pointed at me… I was to beg and steal… And should I get caught I was told to say: …I am hungry... And take the “mundraub” plea (take the “mouth robbery survival ” plea) I might get away…so they did say... American parcels…full of care saved me…saved a foreign white boy… The kid son of a defeated enemy thank you...America the beautiful... These days I can’t forget… I saw little girls… I remember young boys… Half-frozen people Children POW’s…with no noses...no ears...no fingers...no toes... I saw hunger…in staring eyes A dead Nation…no moral to be found on that blood-soaked earthen ground... So…I found you…America I came to you…America Like you…I am now too…America… Now my nightmare…is America... What happened…to your care… America? It was once…me Who stole a bun like you…little black girl from a display deliciously arranged a feast for a hungry eye... By God…did I run… Yes…I was lucky…and got away… But you…little black girl You are handcuffed... Hungry…and that in America…today... Your apple was thrown away… Unsellable into America’s obese garbage can… Now…we feed the swamp of riches... America…what is the price of a bite? …Imagine… We would care and feed that little black girl… America...the bountiful But for now we must re-learn to earn to become again…America…the Beautiful.....  Eike (ike) Waltz – Bio
I enjoyed a three-fold career as classical ballet dancer, an international electronics industry consultant, and as a sculptor/poet. Between these careers, I studied engineering and fine art at the Royal College of Art, London (MdesRCA). www.f-artstatements.com |
Suggestions & IdeasTake a look at some of the writing prompts to get inspired! Archives
August 2023
Poets
All
|
RSS Feed