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American Madonna Hunger wears a face full of hope like the girl on the magazine cover cradling a loaf of white bread as if it’s a miracle. Tonight she will sleep with food in her tummy. Hunger’s face is innocent like the little boy buying a corn-dog at the corner store or his neighbor who’s grateful for two plump strawberries tucked in the family’s food box. Hunger tells the same story sweeping across time and place from Oklahoma’s Dust Bowl to Mississippi’s Delta towns— Loss and desperation landing sucker-punches on families across America. Hunger’s face is weary like the fictional Rose O’Sharon heavy with grief after birthing her stillborn child. Her pain ripples through the air, palpable and raw like the fresh scar on her heart. She seeks refuge from the rain in an old barn, a boy offers her a musty blanket. She spies an old man huddled in the corner gripped by hunger like a fist in his belly. Rose offers him the only gift she has lying down next to him, baring her breast, and sharing her milk. Click on the file below to listen to Ann read her poem: 
 Ann Bracken has authored two poetry collections, No Barking in the Hallways: Poems from the Classroom and The Altar of Innocence, serves as a contributing editor for Little Patuxent Review, and co-facilitates the Wilde Readings Poetry Series. Ann advocates for arts-based interventions for mental health, education, and prison reform.
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The harvest Truth will be the seed the brethren of the earth encounter droplets of a liquid sun filling up all wells the way that dreams fill up a melody of illusion The earth has remained dry and crumbling who would have imagined that iron showers could never bloom a green of feasts but rather bleed an old despair? Rich nations let barrels of food go to waste like depth charges exploding in poor people’s faces. Hunger is no longer tragic just unbearably absurd Come, climb the stairs look up to the spheres and find a comet that even the blind can see then stab the earth slit its veins with love and light and joy and let the truth begin anew We will have bread the field songs will strum a venerable earthquake of memory and we will remember what sharing meant because we’ll learn to share again.
Andrés Abella (born in Valparaíso, Chile, 1970) is a journalist, activist and poet. He lives in Takoma Park, MD, with his family. He studied English language and literature at the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso, Chile, and Journalism at San Francisco State University, California. He worked as a journalist and news editor for more than 15 years in print and online media.
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Hunger-focused Poems by Maryland PoetsCreation of this section and publishing the works of Maryland poets was supported by the Maryland State Arts Council. Archives
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