Degrees of Hunger
by Laura L. Snyder


My skin is white, my college degree within
a calfskin folder on a shelf behind poverty
and bright smiling pictures. I was the wide-eyed one
with promise, they said. And when I married,
I thought love and cornflakes would be enough--
in America. After all, no parent on my block
had to teach a husband might find it
inconvenient to work. How would I know
the way to thrift stores, government
surplus food, or the way to lift lowered eyes?

My car knows all the stops now,
even ones to grocery produce managers.
I ask them for cuttings from lettuce,
overripe fruit, dried up vegetables --
anything
they could set out ...for my chickens.

Now my children are grown. They do not
remember homemade bread and pasta,
nor our diet of unending soup. They do not
remember me on the lawn sorting
boxes of moldy fruits, paring away
with a sharp knife, living
on what I pieced from myself.
They remember hand-me-down clothes,
forms for free lunch programs, their mom
firm lipped about their dad,
and her voice saying, "No, I'm sorry
we can't do it-- there's no money." "No."






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