Starving | M Spear
Give them food
to fill them –
Give them wisdom
to grow them –
A drink of fine
water, bite of hope
to sustain them.
starvation poems
Mickey Mouse Mitten Requiem | G. Louis Heath
The Mickey Mouse mitten on the arid,
Lonely rise pierces the eyes. Long search
Frustrated, requited on this savannah. I
Stand in somber requiem before the Disney
Knitwear. Mickey’s plastic face on the palm
Stares wide empty eyes over a welcome smile,
Overwrought, an unctuous bridge to a magic
Castle. The sparse remains of a child’s withered
Body lay shallow in hard, bitter soil where once
Lions thrived with pride of pride and Zulus ruled.
I burn to knit the boy back to life, feed him full,
Make Mickey ecstatic. I can only step away from
These infamous bones under an impious, gray sky
And wait for sunlight on my shuttered, blue eyes.
Hunger | J.K. Durick
It isn’t an unpleasant feeling for those of us
who are overweight and pamper ourselves,
tuck into two or three full meals each day,
fridges full and pantries aplenty, we get by,
know the feeling from our days on a diet
when a little groan of hunger marks progress
or we know it when it comes on us just before
dinner or a snack, delayed longer than expected.
So, it’s no wonder when we don’t “get” the news
when they show us the hungry all around us,
families wandering into resettlement camps,
stick figures stumbling along, or the child with
a distended stomach lying in his mother’s lap
and the lost looks in their eyes as the watch
the camera watching them starve; their hunger
holds them, while most of us shift uncomfortably
in our chairs and wonder what’s for supper.