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1957
    THOMAS LUX
    More like a vault—you pull the handle out
and on the shelves: not a lot,
and what there is (a boiled potato
in a bag, a chicken carcass
under foil) looking dispirited,
drained, mugged. This is not
a place to go in hope or hunger.
But, just to the right of the middle
of the middle door shelf, on fire, a lit-from-within red,
heart red, sexual red, wet neon red,
shining red in their liquid, exotic,
aloof, slumming
in such company: a jar
of maraschino cherries. Three-quarters
full, fiery globes, like strippers
at a church social. Maraschino cherries, maraschino,
the only foreign word I knew. Not once
did I see these cherries employed: not
in a drink, nor on top
of a glob of ice cream,
or just pop one in your mouth. Not once.
The same jar there through an entire
childhood of dull dinners—bald meat,
pocked peas and, see above,
boiled potatoes. Maybe
they came over from the old country,
family heirlooms, or were status symbols
bought with a piece of the first paycheck
from a sweatshop,
which beat the pig farm in Bohemia,
handed down from my grandparents
to my parents
to be someday mine,
then my child’s?
They were beautiful
and, if I never ate one,
it was because I knew it might be missed
or because I knew it would not be replaced
and because you do not eat
that which rips your heart with joy.

II.
Wintering
    Them belly full but we hungry
.
    â€”BOB MARLEY

SOUP LINES & STAPLES

    There are people in the world so hungry, that God
cannot appear to them except in the form of bread
.
    â€”MAHATMA GANDHI

Te Deum
    CHARLES REZNIKOFF
    Not because of victories
I sing,
having none,
but for the common sunshine,
the breeze,
the largess of the spring.
    Not for victory
but for the day’s work done
as well as I was able;
not for a seat upon the dais
but at the common table.

I, Too, Sing America
    LANGSTON HUGHES
    I, too, sing America.
    I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
    Tomorrow,
I’ll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody’ll dare
Say to me,
“Eat in the kitchen,”
Then.
    Besides,
They’ll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed—
    I, too, am America.

To a Poor Old Woman
    WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
    munching a plum on
the street a paper bag
of them in her hand
    They taste good to her
They taste good
to her. They taste
good to her
    You can see it by
the way she gives herself
to the one half
sucked out in her hand
    Comforted
a solace of ripe plums
seeming to fill the air
They taste good to her

At the IGA: Franklin, New Hampshire
    JANE KENYON
    This is where I would shop
if my husband worked felling trees
for the mill, hurting himself badly
from time to time; where I would bring
my three kids; where I would push
one basket and pull another
because the boxes of diapers and cereal
and gallon milk jugs take so much room.
    I would already have put the clothes
in the two largest washers next door
at the Norge Laundry Village. Done shopping,
I’d pile the wet wash in trash bags
and take it home to dry on the line.
    And I would think, hanging out the baby’s
shirts and sleepers, and cranking the pulley
away from me, how it would be
to change lives with someone,
like the woman who came after us
in the checkout, thin, with lots of rings
on her hands, who looked us over openly.
    Things would have been different
if I hadn’t let Bob climb on top of me
for ninety seconds in 1979.
It was raining lightly in the state park
and so we were alone. The charcoal fire
hissed as the first drops fell. …
In ninety seconds we made this life—
    a trailer on a windy hill, dangerous jobs
in the woods or night work at the packing plant;
Roy, Kimberly, Bobby; too much in the hamper,
never enough in the bank.

Economics at Gemco
    JOHN OLIVARES ESPINOZA
    My mother pushes a grocery cart,
I tug at her blue pleated skirt.
    She puts her change into my hands,
For the old soul slumped against the wall,
His gray