Poem by Linda M. Fischer

​FAMINE
 
 
We follow a river of sand
and wait for the rain that will not come. 
The mouths of our children close on air.
We are the people who were always
here, asking little
but to live,
to warm our bodies with our children
and feel the earth under us.
Our parents gave us life
as simply as the sky turns,
and they who came before us.
We were many.
 
The children learn not to cry.
They do not ask of the earth
what it cannot give
or why their bodies shrivel
like drying fruit.
Their eyes turn back to an age
of not knowing.
The time is coming soon
when our mouths will fill with dust,
when our names won’t remember us. 

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​Linda M. Fischer’s poems have appeared in a variety of journals: Atlanta Review, Blue Heron Review, Ibbetson Street, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Iodine Poetry Journal, Poetry East, Potomac Review, Roanoke Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, The Worcester Review, and the recent anthology Art Through the Eyes of Mad Poets, An Ekphrastic Poetry Collection.  She won the 2019 Philadelphia Writers’ Conference Poetry Contest and recently published her 3rd chapbook, Passages (The Orchard Street Press).   Her website: lindamfischer.com

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