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Soup of the Day In the soup! Something soupy or mushy like cream of mushroom, or brothy like chicken noodle , thick like pea! Soupy! The weather, the air. the toxic waste. Chowder, consommé. chili, stew, poured from Andy’s can or started with a chicken’s decimated carcass. Sip, slurp, dip a silver spoon. the well-fed feed while the poor boil plants, roots, tree bark in filthy water, add dirt for thickness, a witch’s brew for the impoverished. Spit out splinters and teeth, leave the table with belly and soul starved. I was a Lucky One My mother cooked naively, tuna casseroles, pigs in blankets, meat loaf. Once I moved to the city, I mocked her skill to take a perfectly good roast beef and turn it into a small black rock. My parents worked hard to feed us. They offered love, support, education and countless meals. I would trade the organic vegetables and cereals I am privileged to eat to spend an hour chewing my mother’s Sunday roast. Food was available, plentiful, enough to fill a stomach, healthy enough to grow me.  Maggie Bloomfield is a psychotherapist/ poet/playwright/performer, Emmy-winning lyricist, Sesame Street. Two chapbooks: Trains of Thought, Local Gems, 2017, Sleepless Nights, Finishing Line Press, 2020. Poems appear in Oberon, PPA Journal, The Southampton Review (TSR), NCPL, and more. She receive an MFA from Stony Brook, Southampton (SBSH). Maggie co-hosts Poetry Street, a hybrid poetry venue, at The Riverhead Library and on ZOOM.
www.maggiebloomfield.com
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Ingredients for Happiness They say kindness comes from the heart But hunger pierces a man the most My mother always said, So learn to soothe that hunger those incessant wanting, those innumerable desires. Those that sit precariously between the soft folds of our soul That jagged hunger that only can be satiated by those deft supple wrinkled hands coated with the flour and oil kneading the dough on the warm summer afternoon soaked by the apricity of the sun. What is the definition of happiness? There are many yet none. A belly stuffed with the desire to be fed an ambrosial meal by the loved ones A lingering need that clings to our soft parts thick as greed waiting to grow, wanting to heal. Those moments pitted with joy, Those moments pregnant with the proximity of the loved ones brimming with passion soaked with the unending desires acts like a tourniquet for our bleeding self. As we gather around the whistling teapot surrounded by the verdant greens of Gaia embellished with the soft pockets of clouds floating carelessly on a warm summer afternoon suffused with healing and nostalgia in equal measures Those precious moments when the air is suffused with the aroma of warm freshly cooked home meal douse the desires in your belly and syncopates with the mellifluous melody of the long-lost tunes. What more could a heart want? Then to be around the kitchen table a sole witness of our contentment and wanting; for times unknown, Where every grain of the wood is ingrained with the little joys and nostalgia of life lived to the brim stripped of its loneliness, brimming with unmeasurable elation Of being together as one family kneaded like a lump of dough as a dollop of the milky white moon; waiting to rise out of warmth, Together. First published in Visual Verse Vol 8 Chapter 09, Archived at New Castle Centre for Literary Arts, UK.  Megha Sood is an award-winning Asian-American author, poet, editor, and literary activist from New Jersey. Literary Partner with “Life in Quarantine”, at Stanford University. Her four poetry collections include the award-winning (My Body Lives Like a Threat, FlowerSong Press, 2022), (“My Body Is Not an Apology, FinishingLine Press, 2022), and (“Language of the Wound is Love, FlowerSong Press, 2025). She has received support from VONA, Pen Women, Dodge Foundation, Kundiman, and Martha’s Vineyard Writing Institute. Her 900+ works have been featured in PSNY, MS Magazine, NYPL, Pen Magazine, PBS, and WNYC Studio. Her poems and co-edited anthology “The Medusa Project” have been selected to be sent to the moon in 2025 in collaboration with NASA/SpaceX. Link: https://linktr.ee/meghasood
Center City, Gaza Children proffer bowls Tables teeter on rubble Someone ladles love BIO: Nan Meneely has loved working with Haven's Harvest to rescue food. She has published two books with Antrim House. Letter from Italy, 1945 was named by the Hartford Courant as one of thirteen important books by 2013 Connecticut writers. Simple Absence, published in 2020, was nominated for the National Book Award.
HUNGER WILL NOT END Hunger can not end, as long as greed is respected and admired, and money is the prize for depriving others of their basic lives. Don't applaud the rich until they give away excess millions wealth, not necessary for their own needs. No one should starve while others have much more than they can need. The most effective change, can only be in hearts that recognize belonging to our human family.  A reluctant carbon-based life-form, Duane L Herrmann was surprised to find himself on a farm in Kansas in 1951. His work has been published in print and online, even some of both in languages he can’t read. These include a sci fi novel, nine collections of poetry, two collections of short stories, a local history, stories for children and more. He has carried baby kittens in his mouth, petted snakes, and has had conversations with owls, but is careful not to anger them! All this, despite a traumatic, abusive childhood embellished with dyslexia, ADHD; now compounded by cyclothymia, and anxiety disorder, and PTSD.
Spring, again Famine in Yemen, gunmen in New Zealand, catastrophic flooding across the Great Plains. Spring is a promise, not a guarantee. The planet shifts on its axis, a wobbling top, and every day we must learn to stand and walk again, watching for falling planes overhead, the first green shoots of crocus underfoot. This poem first appeared in the anthology We Don’t Break, We Burn: Poems of Resiliency.  Writer, editor and teacher Wayne Lee (wayneleepoet.com) lives in Santa Fe, NM. Lee’s poems have appeared in Tupelo Press, Slipstream, Nimrod, The New Guard, Writer’s Digest and other journals and anthologies. He was awarded the Fischer Prize and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and three Best of the Net Awards. His collection The Underside of Light was a finalist for the 2014 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award and his collection Dining on Salt: Four Seasons of Septets is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press in 2025. Lee is the founder and host of the online Tuesday Poetry Practice community.
Hunger Tear off the doors of grain silos so the grain flows unimpeded from the fertile plains of America to the remote villages of Africa. Ship the ripe fruits of the tropics to the emaciated children in the Middle East. Quench the parched mouths of young women, ready to give birth, with fresh, cool waters from the gushing cascades in the mountains of Canada. No one should ever know the debilitating pain of hunger! Not when food is rampant throughout the world. No one should have to watch their bodies shrink in suffocating heat while they become victims to starvation. Not when a banquet of food is spread in elegant displays in the palatial assemblies of presidents and prime ministers. No one needs to stagger on weak legs as they move miserably trying to find something to eat. Not when the affluent nations throw away tons of uneaten food every day. No one should ever die of hunger on this planet abounding with luscious edible foods! Not one child! Not one mother! Not one grandfather! Not millions who remain trapped inside invisible prisons because of the lack of food. The cells are locked, and the hours press agonizingly upon the prisoners! Bring them food! Liberate them from their prisons! Show them the compassion of an altruistic fellow human! When one person goes hungry, we all lose a tiny bit of our strength and a tiny bit of our dignity and a tiny bit of our identity as children of the sacred Lord of Life!  Neal Grace has traveled the world on an adventure of discovery. His poetry portrays the wonders of life, as well as its challenges. He believes the quickest way to freedom and joy is by expanding consciousness and aligning with a greater compassion toward all beings. He lives in San Rafael, California with his beloved wife Jaclyn.
Magnum, No. 15: The Eleventh Plague: War 8.15.2024 skin diseases slither like snakes along sharp-chipped cement-block rubble alleyways skeletal children crumble in the waves of hunger. bomb blasts blow up kids’ faces: “eyeless in Gaza.” Magnum 17: Glazed Eyes in Gaza 8.22.2024 his face drawn tight in classic triangles, the sharp edges were everyday cubist. frozen in time on the hospital bed, mouth open, his shock protruded like bones: he was starving to death  Q.R.Quasar is a poet, playwright, novelist & scholar/translator of Arabic & Persian poetry/philosophy (Ph.D., UCLA). Poems/translations in Poetry, Hawaii Review, Al-Arabiyya, Blackbox, etc. Among his 11 books are Buddha Time (Global Scholarly Pubs. [GSP]: gsp-books.org), Ocean of Suns (GSP), Watching the Universe Die (GSP), & Expanse of Green (translated Persian poetry of Sepehry: UNESCO/Kalimat). Awards: 1st Prize, Chicago Poetry Festival; Columbia University Translation Prize, Int'l Scholar of the Year (1998: for Persian translations.). TV/radio readings in Persian/English: Europe, Asia, USA. Live readings: Iran, Russia, China, USA. Founding member, San Francisco Bay Area Poets Coalition. Contact QRQ directly for books.
hunger I like the hunger best. how it feels so overpowering, like the longer I go the more my body begs for food. I like how it’s all up to me, whether to feed this beast or let her wither into nothingness. how I don’t even have to try to tune everything out these days. how I can watch others eat and feel full. how happy I get on the scale when I’m right under the nearest ten. how I get more compliments for my control. the restraint, the dedication, the nights of battle where I doubt if any of this is worth it before remembering I don’t know how to leave, or maybe just don’t want to. this poem is inspired by and mimics the form of Ada Limón’s “How to Triumph Like a Girl”  Amanda Conover frequently discusses ideas related to existentialism and spirituality. She is the poetry editor for Carolina Muse Literary & Arts Magazine and is an MFA alum from Arcadia University. Her poetry has appeared in places such as the lickety~split, Miracle Monacle, and Atlanta Review.
I Am No Better than They Across the room there is a child Whose eyes could see the potential in me Hands write the poem of a century And mouth cheer when they smiled They could strum a guitar And gather each person in the room And the function couldn’t resume Because the astonishment is bizarre! They could lend me a pencil when I need Loan an umbrella when it pelts down Look the other way to not worry me when they frown And walk an elder across the street But instead their eyes drift to the ground Their ribs show when their hands raise At times they can’t mumble a phrase And they get a second lunch despite it being browned And while I spend hours learning the flute Stare at my screen thinking of a next line Make it everyone's problem when im not fine And discard a stale, dull and uninspiring fruit I still have a better chance than them Not because of talent or virtue But because of privilege and luck too So is it really an eye for an eye and a gem for a gem? They must focus on not what is to come But a meal ahead Only then, for a moment, will they be relieved of the dread As they taste the pleasantness of what life can become BIO: Paulina is a freshman at the Brooklyn Latin School in NYC. Here, she hopes to continue unraveling her known hobbies and passions of writing and theatre, as well as attempt to add new interests to that list such as a variety of sports and public speaking. She has grown up fortunate enough to not have to feel worry about food on the table, and believes that feeling is a basic human right. She believes that whether or not you can meet the basic nutritional needs of your body directly correlates to and impacts all other aspects of your life.
Left Blank Empty plates Lines the table No Crumbs to gather Neither None or Not Enough For everyone Doesn’t seem right Seemingly, Out of nowhere Appeared mom From out of sight Filling a small spoon A sprinkle of crumbs We’ll share And sleep well tonight  Chip Williford - Director and Co-host of Poetry Street is a prose, poetry, and short story writer, published in several publications. He is a passionate equal rights advocate and activist for peace and human rights, filmmaker, documentarian, family historian, good listener, and relatable
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