By Tom Darin Liskey *

Hunger

I saw the boy
Go to the rail
To take communion
With his parents—
A family
Kneeling  together
In solemn hush
As a priest readied
To place
The sacrament
On their tongues.
But the boy
Grabbed
His portion
Of the corpus
From the startled padre’s hand—
Shoving the bread
In his mouth
Chewing
It
Like bubble gum.
And I could not stop thinking,
That this boy’s wild hunger
Is as it should be.

*Tom Darin Liskey spent nearly a decade working as a journalist in Venezuela, Argentina and Brazil. He is a graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi. His writing has appeared in the Crime Factory, HeartWood Literary Magazine, Live Nude Poems, Driftwood Press, and Biostories, among others. His photographs have been published in Hobo Camp Review, Blue Hour Magazine, Synesthesia Literary Journal and Midwestern Gothic. He uses images and words for a monthly narrative photography column at Change Seven.