Gary Glauber
Gary Glauber is a widely published poet, fiction writer, teacher, and former music journalist. He has five collections, Small Consolations (Aldrich Press), Worth the Candle (Five Oaks Press), Rocky Landscape with Vagrants (Cyberwit), A Careful Contrition (Shanti Arts Publishing) and most recently, Inside Outrage (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions), a Eric Hoffer Medal Provocateur finalist. He also has two chapbooks, Memory Marries Desire (Finishing Line Press) and The Covalence of Equanimity (SurVision Books), a winner of the 2019 James Tate International Poetry Prize.
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God’s Soup
Ladle it up,
tureens of happiness
from the cradle of civilization itself.
In dreams, your hunger undone
like a minor miracle
and enough to sate the waiting horde.
Sip by sip, the flavor
of favor and grace replaces
the anger, the misplaced frustration.
Air strikes and scary siren’s songs
distract from this mid-east oasis,
an alarming reflection of how hunger
for equality, decency, a code of respect
never quite subsides. Stomachs growl
as mourning families howl in sudden grief.
Tonight the world spins heavily
and the kitchen stays open all hours,
filling up bowls with enduring faith
that someday the struggle of ages
can share the recipe for lasting peace
and lap up the last drops
with pita, biscuit, cracker, or rice.
Yes, wouldn’t it be nice to have
such pangs of angry hunger cease.
So serve selflessly, serve long lines happily,
serve your maker’s soup-of-the-day special
until the empty bowls spell great relief.
