Stone Soup Kitchen Ministries

  What the Food Stamp Sees Honey, I know you’re hungry. You think I don’t hear your stomach growl, even from the depths of your bag? I see the way you look through the windows of the fancy restaurant, plates piled high with half-eaten meals you could only dream of. I know I don’t hold much promise-- a bag of rice, some milk, perhaps a fresh head of cabbage and some apples-- just enough to quiet the echoes that rumble through you. But who am I, a mere piece of paper, to tell you how you feel? The fear, the shame. I see it in your eyes and the way your spine collapses when you pull me out. ​I can only tell you what you already must know. That I am merely a band-aid when you deserve so much more. Susan Scheid is a poet and literary activist who lives in Washington, DC. Susan honed her craft while working for the last 30 years as a Legal Secretary. She was inspired by her father reading poems to her at bedtime and by stories of him reading poetry to his fellow wounded soldiers in medic...

  ABOUT HUNGER A poem about hunger Is not one of awe, not one of wonder This thing that grows Below, Inside Reflects, Of need Denied A painful thing to see A wretched thing to be In hunger ​A darkness Sharp, clawing at ones’ being The lungs, the heart Messing with the reasoning of the mind The hope The emptiness that rises To the throat Choking on water Offering appeasement to the belly Releasing unrelenting anguish In a language called despair The weariness that is telling The aching, the swelling The deadly devastation That stalks in starvation The extreme Muffled muted screams It cries, it sobs It whimpers in its’ call The distance The fierce, intense, insistence Of the sustenance one needs Shows Hunger is an enemy to us all Like the falling of darkness gives rise to gloom and doom Its’ darker and darker and darker and darker and…                                          © 20...

  Fast If you were to ask me about hunger I would tell you it's like being held  in empty arms for too long, purse strings tightened at the parched mouth drawn closed on unmet needs.  Thirst is a dry river bed, a dead cricket's leg,  trough of dust, fat snowflake  uncaught by young tongues. And after the deep well  no longer cares what it might hold, at the first bite, the first sip the animal need to take all not to taste, but to fill, not to quench, but to flow. But what do I know of real hunger, true thirst? If I could pack it up, I'd send it– the wasted corporate buffet, the bottled waterfall.  I swear, I would send it to you. Fast, I'd fast. Ellen Rowland is the author of two collections of haiku/senryu as well as the book Everything I Thought I Knew, essays on living, learning and parenting outside the status quo. Her writing has appeared in numerous literary journals and in several poetry anthologies, most recently The Path to Kindness: Poems of...