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Feed the Bellies The children cry, Squeals in the day. Tossing and turning in the night. Piercing the hearts and souls of their parents. Who themselves are, Bewildered, distraught - deprived. Unable to help their children or themselves. Kids are hungry. Without food in this wide wide world of resources. Empty bellies. Empty spirits. Enduring pain, ongoing suffering, A void of nutrients because of lack of resources, Or the lack of consciousness and compassion? The children cry because of waste. Insensitivity and selfishness. A lack of care. When buckets of fruit drop and left to rot. When vegetables overgrow and tossed away. When tons of food decay in our stores and factories. When we take more than we can chew. And scrape the rest down the drain or in the garbage. Stop wasting food when the young bellies hurt. The earth’s bounty delivers enough for us all. There’s an abundance of food in this wide wide world. Share the resources. Nourish the innocent souls. Let them survive and thrive- so they can rise. Grow it -can it -dry it -and ship it. Lives depends on it. With compassion, empathy and consciousness, We can quell the hungry cries. Feed the bellies. Feed the people.  Dianna L. Grayer, PhD., is a Marriage and Family Therapist in Northern California and has been in private practice for over 25 years. She is also an author, speaker, playwright, director and producer. She spends most of her free time writing poems, plays and children’s books. Dr. Grayer loves to empower, inspire and educate others so that they can live fuller and happier lives.
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Homeless because … He is homeless because he failed math. He couldn't figure out how to divide 1 pay check into 4 hungry children. He could only add to his mounting bills. He could only subtract opportunities. He should have studied how to multiply options. She is homeless because she failed english. She is a pronoun it is used instead of a noun. Nouns are places, people, things or ideas. She has no place People have abandon her and the thing is food but she has no idea from where. Children are homeless because sons and daughters failed biology not knowing a zygote from aint got snuggle beneath their father’s musky arm pits. See he perspires worry about the children slumbering on his shoulder.. Comforted by the stench knowing daddy is near. They are homeless because They failed political-science. So hard to trace boundaries and remember political parties when you're not at the festivities. Franklin's New Deal does not have the urgency of the raw deal they have been dealt. Cards pulled from the bottom of the deck. but Homeless is not hopeless and they have failed political science, biology english and math but has society failed humanity. This poem first appeared in in Liberty Press’s 99 Poets for the 99%. Elijah b Pringle III an artivist who uses art to subtlety or loudly protest/enlighten. “When you hit people over the head with a message, you make them unconscientious. I want to awaken them with a nudge or a slap!” Published globally he has appeared on Radio, TV & Stage. He has over 40 years of experience in Training/Education. He credits his true education to 5 generation of teachers.
History of the Hand --for Frank Niemiec History of the ditch digger, stone mason, countless men in factories, on the line. History of abundance, of miracles because it is by our hands that we become who we are. “Marry a man for his hands,” my father said. Probably remembering his own father and the mangled right hand that was torn in half by the machine at the woolen mill. But what did the old man know about machines? He was a foreigner who couldn’t speak the language, a peasant farmer born in Poland when it wasn’t even called Poland. His hands knew only two things: black earth and how to coax the miracle of green from it. Each spring he would perform the miracle in his small American garden. His left hand did the mundane chore of clearing the winter’s debris, breaking the ground with hoe and shovel and pickaxe. His right hand--that terrible, wondrous hand--performed the ultimate magic: placed each seed in its proper spot, made sure it grew into a cabbage or pepper or summer squash. I remember how carefully he would wash that hand after the day’s work. Pat it dry. Place it almost casually on my shoulder. Luminous, enchanted. This poem was previously published in Linda’s book, Living in the Fire Nest (Ridgeway Press, 1996). Click on the file below to listen to the poem: 
 Linda Nemec Foster is the author of 12 collections of poetry including Talking Diamonds, Amber Necklace from Gdansk, and The Lake Michigan Mermaid (2019 Michigan Notable Book). Foster is the founder of the Contemporary Writers Series at Aquinas College and was selected to be the first Poet Laureate of Grand Rapids, MI from 2003-2005. Her most recent book, The Blue Divide, was published in 2021.
In the Presence of Hunger In the nine decades my father lived, he’d experienced the disgrace of unemployment, employment in backbreaking labors, bare feet. In his 70’s, despite my mother’s objections that it was for the really poor, he stood in line for government-issued cheese, refusing to give his name and income. Instead he lifted up his shirt to show his six-inch surgical incision, Look what they’ve done to me, he’d say, and because it was still raw in its recovery, they turned away and gave him the orange cheddar chunk that we rejected because it tasted so bland and waxy. But he sliced it, placed each piece on soda crackers and ate it with sweetened, milk-laden coffee, because his age had taught him there is no dishonor in hunger: the memory of The Great Depression a half-century strong. Video of the poem: https://youtu.be/pZ0_NUF63w8  Teresa Méndez -Quigley was selected as the 2004 Poet Laureate for Montgomery County (PA). She studied under the tutelage of poet Christopher Bursk. She resides in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, with her family, surrounded by untamed gardens and stacks of poems yet to be housed.
Hunger Speaks Hunger. Call my name, people cringe. A dark reputation precedes me. Emptiness, discomfort, longing, potential death leave a bad taste in the mouth. I am misunderstood. I am a signal, reminder, alert. “Hey, your body needs food.” My job is to warn not harm. If I linger too long, the body, mind, spirit suffers. If I linger too, too long, the human vessel perishes. Still, I have hope. Imagine healthy meals on every table. Imagine well fed children thriving in the classroom. Imagine abundant food sources shared worldwide. But for now, Say Hunger, people cringe. All you can eat, people binge. Wasted food could feed many. I wish my name meant plenty. Click on the file below to listen to the poem:
 Aressa V. Williams, a retired DC Public School teacher and an Assistant Professor of English retiree, is also a writing consultant and poet. The aspiring message-maker wrote her first book of poems to earn a Girl Scout badge for Creative Writing. Aressa’s self-published works are Soft Shadows, The Penny Finder, and Pancakes & Chocolate Milk. The word-weaver believes poems are word snapshots. She is the proud mother of Aaron Coley and the grateful grandmother of Aressa Coley.
Koans Did you know that a tribe in Africa ate dirt with seeds hoping they would bloom Did you hear about the village in China where people swallowed grains of dry rice with hot water Did you notice the child in Appalachia giving her apple to the brother who was dying Did you see the stray cat outside your door at night waiting so she could feed her kittens And do you remember the Prophet who turned water to wine trusting us to “Fresh fruits, Fresh fields, Fresh grain” Click on the file below to listen to the poem:
 Grace Cavalieri is Maryland’s Tenth Poet Laureate. She’s written 22 books and chapbooks of poetry; and 26 produced short-form and full-length plays. Her newest poetry publications are The Secret Letters of MMadame de Stael (2021;) and, What The Psychic Said (2020.) Her latest play was “Quilting The Sun,” Theatre for The New City, NYC, 2019. Grace founded and still produces "The Poet and the Poem" on public radio, celebrating 44 years on-air in 2021. The show’s recorded at the Library of Congress and transmitted via Pacifica Network.
Admission of Guilt and Hope
too much Click on the file below to listen to the poem:
 Heather Smith Meloche is a Pushcart-nominated poet and writer whose work has appeared in Spider, Open Minds Quarterly, and Young Adult Review Network (YARN). She has placed twice in the children’s/YA category of the Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Competition and won first place for Hunger Mountain’s Katherine Paterson Prize in 2011 for a short story in verse. Penguin Putnam released her debut novel, Ripple, a contemporary young adult novel, in September 2016. She lives in Michigan with her husband and two boys.
Savoring I arrived at her house with absence and sadness, pliant with fear. Stood beside avocadoes and Doc’s special chicken, cold on a plate, as she pulled circles of dough outward and flipped them to bows, making something called taiglech, which she dropped like bullets into hot- bubbled honey. Nearly midnight, she let me be tired, but I stirred and she whisked until we were trading in syrup, our hands sticky and gesturing above boiled nectar. We shaped conversation in the noise of particulars, the complexion of night, and grease- ripe pleasures left to dry on white paper towels. The dark-haired woman smiled loosely and I listened – to her, instead of my maelstrom of worry. Everything I needed was seeped in phrases about menus and tables and long loaves of bread. All that happened was cooking, the room so alive with acts of alchemical desire, where dark didn’t froth. In that place, that October, where I tasted sweet with my dad’s new lover, where she tempted me back to my assertive sense by asking nothing, where she let me retreat and consume both the ginger and honey, and kept me away from the burn while extending the sugar. This poem was first published in The Perch. Audio recording of the poem can be found here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/j5brmp7sun5hdhy/L.%20Camp-Savoring.mp3?dl=0  Lauren Camp is the author of five books, most recently Took House (Tupelo Press). Honors include the Dorset Prize and a finalist citation for the Arab American Book Award. Her poems have appeared in Poetry International, Witness and Kenyon Review, and been translated into Mandarin, Turkish, Spanish, and Arabic. www.laurencamp.com
Appling I grabbed the dictionary and flipped more pages and all kinds of things seemed to be verbs: “to be a hill,” “to be red,” “to be a long, sandy stretch of beach” . . . Robin Wall Kimmerer, on learning Potawatomi Braiding Sweetgrass Who is being an apple tree? My friend over there with the shady leaves. My sister with white blossoms in her hair apples temptation, sweet-fleshed and comely. Apple sister roots herself, entwines with honey pear cousin, dips into mycelium buzzing news of the forest. Who is being a forest? Who shades the moss? Who wears the lichen mantle stands sentry at the mouth of the river. Who is the river? Did anyone ask to become the summer evening air sedulous with dew? Who dews in clear globes remembering cloudburst she will do, has done, will do? Who am I breathing tree breath if not tree kin? If not apple and worm, bacterium and spore? When I was rhizoming, the mineral-rising surged through, while you were beaning nitrogen into the soil, which earths tirelessly—for so long, for so long-- but what glad work it is! You can view the video of the poem reading here: 
 Cleveland Wall is a poet, mail artist, and librarian in Bethlehem, PA. She performs with poetry improv troupe No River Twice and with musical combo The Starry Eyes. She is the author of Let X=X (Kelsay Books, 2019) and many small, handmade chapbooks.
Ribbons in Your Field no matter how much rain falls you will be all right recall spring where nature whispers to a waiting field where all hopes faithfully soak nudging a belief in growth and change leaning forward in peace sowing trust like a monk dropping seed blessing its fairness seasoning a waiting field while keeping that final vow Click on the file below to listen to audio recording of the poem:
 Antoni Ooto is an American poet and abstract expressionist artist living in New York State. His poetry has been published globally in journals, anthologies and online.
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AboutThe poems that follow are powerful evidence that Poetry Speaks Back to Hunger! Archives
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