From The Bottom Of My Stomach

Each growl is a reminder of the state
That the economy is in lately
The rent and bills suck up most of the budget
Leaving very little change for food
As I sit on my couch imagining a bowl of ramen with bok choy
I shudder at the prospect of going hungry another day
As my hands shake from a lack of fuel
On TV, those with privilege lecture us to cut back
Yet gorge themselves on overpriced wine and beef
I’m sure that my stomach can survive on virtue signalling
Hunger solved, amen to the rich and elite,
As I search my couch for loose change
Praying that I have three dollars
To rid me of this stomach pain.

Bio: K.G. Munro is a poet and author who has been published in hundreds of journals across eight different countries. She is currently writing a novel and is about to release a poetry book.

​Irish Famine Poems

I Surmise

So far back
I can only surmise,
of the family who ate
their subsistence meal
in the parlour on Sundays.

I surmise they were not the poorest.
Their house – not a sod, scraw and thatch
cabin on a roadside margin.

I surmise secure tenure of land.
They did not, at least not all,
leave.

I surmise they were people
with self-value, respectability,
tenacity.

​I know that they survived.
They were my people
on the distaff side.

In a Fourth Class Dwelling

Report by Robert E. Matheson, Registrar General for Ireland.
1841-1901 Housing of the People of Ireland Part 83.

4th Class – Houses built of mud or perishable materials.
One room with one, or no window.

3rd Class – A better description of house.
From one to four rooms and windows.

2nd Class – A good farmhouse of five to nine rooms and windows.

1st Class – All other houses of a better description than the
preceding.

1841. 4 th class houses comprised 37% of the total.
1851. 4 th class houses comprised 13% of the total.
The drop was due to ‘failure of the potato crop leading to famine, fever and pestilence’.

With sod, scraw and thatch
they made the shelter
which enveloped them.
The cabin rose from
the ground around it.

When nothing was left
but a flicker of life,
the family drew together inside,
closing the door for decency.

Rain, wind and time
melted the walls.
The roof lowered.
The door rotted.
The cabin sank

​to a hummock, to a wide ridge,
disappeared from sight.
As had the dead from hunger within,
of whom all knowledge has gone.

BIO:
​I come from Co.Limerick, Ireland. I grew up on a farm there. I am a painter, weaver and have written and published poems in recent years.

HUNGER

Hunger:
Running naked, to the bakery shop
On the roadside, at the intersection,
Mom’s food is a distant dream,
And the money in the pocket is valueless.

Hunger:
Just not limited to
Beggars queued in front of the temple,
On near the traffic signal
It’s in the eyes of the child
Staring from the mother's shoulder cloth bag.

Hunger:
Was crossing road when the signal turned green-
Through the eyes of a corporate mother,
She had left home in the morning
A child's emotional cry
And in the solace of the baby-sitter.

Hunger:
It also reaches abroad
In the educated son's suitcase
This shop to that restaurant
Back like an empty pocket-
Grossly disappointed!

Hunger:
Laughs out loud,
Earth trembles, showing her big belly
Money, wealth, all these are worthless
Filling a hungry stomach
Is truly the glory of greatness.

Hunger:
Exists everywhere
Hidden, yet can be felt
Like the presence of an invisible enemy.
When hunger strikes
There’s no religion or race
No wrong or right
Hunger teaches man
What humanity is!

This poem was originally written by me in Odia (Oriya) and titled “BHOKA” and published in an online newspaper.

HUNGER DURING COVID-19

Hunger came,
Unnoticed, sneaking covertly.
Bigger than
The virus scare
Spreading its wings.
Injuring many lives,
Puncturing every segment of the livelihood
Preying on tender lives more often
Took away all the new possibilities along.

As they say, "Difficulty comes with kith and kin."
True to the proverb,
Came along cyclones and locusts.
Hunger is often accompanied by
Blasé towards the hungry and deprived
By the so-called elite mindset.
Whom neither the picture of the dead dog eater
Nor the dustbin digger, deterred.

Will a new day come?
When every heart will ache
For hunger attack
Every eye will open to the injustice
Every hand will reach out to the needy.
A hungerless new world will be smiling.

This poem is awaiting publication in an anthology titled “Unlocking Hopes”.

The Beggar

A sharp wind
makes me pull down my hat,
tighten my coat.
"Bloody freezing, innit."
He has no gloves.
His blue swollen fingers
barely close around the cup
which rattles in response
to the few coins I let drop.
"Thanks, mate."
He huddles a little deeper
into the recess by the bank’s
cash machine.

​"They should move them on.
Bring the neighbourhood down."
I turn. The owner of the complaint
is tall, blonde, sheep-skinned,
with tell-tale signs
of trying to stem the tide of aging.

I suddenly feel guilty by association.
Because I gave him so little?
Because I gave at all?
Because I smiled at her?

We Didn’t Know We Were Poor
​
Sometimes we went hungry, but not much. Mother made dandelion salad and stingy-
nettle soup. Potatoes and carrots in water with salt. Mother had been on the train again to visit farmer Ruttenberger. Left our last silver flatware with his wife. Brought back a big sack of rye. Can see her still, her too large dress, her apron, the coffee machine between her thighs, milling. Everyone was the same. You don’t notice if you have nothing to compare yourself to. My scary aunt with the deep voice and a wart on her chin would send us into the woods: ‘Don’t you go eating the blueberries now. Bring them home, you hear? I need them for jam making.’ There was a place near the brook, where the world smelled of woodruff and ceps, where bluebells announced our indelicate approach. Getting back empty-handed, round-eyed and honest-to-god we hadn’t found even one, my aunt wiped blue-purple stains from our guilty faces while winking at my mother. My uncle is looking for his cat with a darkening face. ‘I’ll find out who ate her!’

When I was Six

I remember the smell of
earth after summer rain,
the high grass hiding
me. It tickled, pinched
and stung. I followed
the activities of beetles,
caterpillars and assorted
small life.

Rolled myself packages of sorrel;
chewing them despite the acid
was the challenge.
Being hungry helped.

The lark slowly climbed
into blue. Became a small
black dot, trilling ecstatically.
My summer vision was framed
by green stalks of long grasses
and their seeds.

Standing on a milestone
I saw the fields covered
in shimmering heat, warping
invisible air. Cornflowers and
poppies between sandy-yellow
wheat. There would be a good

harvest. Yes, even then I knew
about harvests, watched the
sweating man and their flails.
Sometimes I’d take home
a pocket-full of grains.

Mother wiped my face,
hands, knees. My feet
permanently calloused.

The grains ground in the coffee mill
held firm between mother’s legs.
That last summer before
next May when strange men

​came in planes, tanks, and jeeps,
I watched André riding the brown back,
his face lit by the evening sun,
watched the oxen pulling carts,
watched the plow grooving
black furrows for the autumn
field, watched the swarms
of mosquitoes dance over the
stagnant pond and fell in love.

POT BELLY

Hope of an empty tomorrow sounds many roars through the weak walls of an ailing belly suffering from malnourished protrusion of that abandoned boy absorbing the jabs of starvation — walking barefooted in the deep valley of hunger while his lower jaw hangs low, yet uncertainty beckons nearer by the hour of the clock.

Ragged in his coat of many worries as he carries his funeral on his head, searching ultimately for where to dig a hole in the earth and hide his shame from the eyes of the day's light. For darkness hurls him along the track of misery with song sung in his mother tongue — perturbed by the dialect of strings of a heartbeat unable to hold the tension — of a frustrated voice.

Jumping over the fire he leaped above the pot belly bridging the gap between groans of not having and wishing for having bread from the baked loaves of food poisoning. Thirsty & weary: he tried drawing water from the dried well of tears — brimmed over with agony, yet he draws… emptiness instead: bucket full of nothingness, he counts 24 of his bare rib cage.

Labeling each as he feels the breath of hunger on his shoulder --
the stench of political corruption fouling his state of being --
violating his human rights
and seizing his smuggled pot of beans he made away
​with when the Watcher wasn't watching.

Hard Knock Life
​
Nutriment from fruit and vegetable
All sensation to the leaf, hoof, on rumination
All fruition to the thin root, at germination
Are gone extinct. Ever since;

The game of Thrones started with unpredictable seasons
The game of throws from bumper harvests ended
The toss of food like it is softball
The drunken masterly imbibe,

Which things used to be in hoards
Through pipe rings
Our little holes for swallowing big_ 
Right down,
Into stomach nets, or nests
As would the fancied basket ball

All those miracles ain't trite no more
Over-writings of early morning breakfast,
With top up luncheon and supper baskets at night time
Have become-alike-dry riverbeds

Such, now is the way it is
With every hungry man's throat
Flake aching like sun dried grass, 
As yellowish red as sand!
Only hoodlum and contagion remain_

In a comically fraudulent sense!
Famished are we, when with
Almost, all nourishment sources burnt out
To ashes
By lack of rains acting in cahoots with
Everything so called Global warming...

You can watch the video by clicking on the file below:

Shy once

She must have been shy once,
I thought,
As she tugged her headscarf a little tighter around her head.
Battered and worn-out, its color must have been
Outrageously bright long ago
But now it was just faded grey.
"I haven't eaten today. Spare some change?"
She asks.
I looked at her bare feet, dirty and rough
She hadn't owned shoes for quite some time,
I thought.
"I am hungry. Please spare some change, sir."
I can hear the slightest quiver in her voice
As she tugs her scarf tighter.
She must have been shy once
When her headscarf was outrageously bright red
Or pink or purple.
When her feet had shoes
Or at least a pair of sandals.
But as she reminded me for the third time,
She was poor and hungry,
And shame does not fill her belly.
She can not afford to be shy.
Yet I could not meet her half-hidden eyes,
As if I was holding enough shame for the both of us.
She must have been shy once.
I thought
But now she is just hungry.

A white-collar worker by profession and a poet by passion, Imtiaj Alom currently lives in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. A member of Wordsmiths of Kuching and KL Poetry Share, he performed in Word of Mouth, If Walls Could Talk, Inqbate, Berani Bersama and regularly performs in KL Poetry Shares Bi-weekly gathering.

Endurance for humanity

‘’A day without food is a wasted day’’
Said the boy in a war torn refugee camp
But have you ruminated

On life without a farmer, food transporters, donors
Agriculture educators, food banks, processors and distributors

Again, have you imagined life without

Food and Agriculture Organization, World Food Programme
And the Capital Area Food Bank with their partners

‘’Yes, I have’’

Then what do you have to tell about that life
‘’You will never know that a madman on the street has brothers

Until you kill him!

I see one billion people left with no jobs
Isn’t that about 28% of the world population
I see rampant deaths due to hunger and starvation’’

What else do you see

‘’Malnutrition, diseases and stunted growth in children
Delayed delivery of the scanty available food
I see many economies collapsing

I see extreme poverty and food poisoning due to aflatoxins’’

All the holy books, whether the Christian bible, the Hindu Gita,
The Moslem Quran and the Buddhism scriptures

Are unanimous in one thing, that growing and sharing food is a good thing
With their humility like that of the carpenter of Nazareth,

Even in the covid 19 pandemic!

Fruits, legumes, vegetables, tubers, grains, meat and eggs have been constantly supplied

Aren’t these very crucial in the fight against covid 19
Oh…..even in the pandemic, they have been present!
But who are these food architectures, your guess is as good as mine!

Therefore, step up and be counted

On emulating what these great people do, on passing favourable policies

On supporting their hard work
On making them feel respected and appreciated
When the roots are deeper, there is no reason to fear the wind.

Click on the file below to listen to the poem:

Our actions are our future

​Why cutting down trees
Dumping polythenes in soil
Settling in wetlands

Why abuse and excessively use agrochemicals
Pouring waste industrial residues into farm land
Is it because they are the solutions for survival today

Don’t you know

That some of today’s solutions are tomorrow’s problems
Such as the 811 million people go hungry
What about the 690 million people undernourished
Desertification and drought at an alarming rate
Low yields in agricultural production
Contaminated and unsafe food for consumption
Don’t we commemorate the world food day every 16 th October

What have we learnt from it
Have we put it into practice
Are you aware?

That you are potential victim
Besides, a potential solution to this fate
And that if we come together, we can change our destiny

Through sustainable agriculture
Afforestation and re-afforestation
Rightly using agrochemicals
Protecting the wetlands
Proper disposal of polythene materials
Can’t we invest more in agricultural research
That we may have plenty of food

To mitigate hunger and undernourishment across the globe

Isn’t this the right time

To exploit the available and explore more postharvest handling technologies
That we invest in in refrigeration and silos to store more grains

I believe that all this can be done
And that it will be done
Because if it’s not done we are done
May God bless you.

Click on the link to listen to the poem: 
​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g4vQ5A8vSk&t=4s