by Robin Wright
Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Shutterstock
Five months into its unprecedented dismantling of foreign-aid programs, the Trump administration has given the order to incinerate food instead of sending it to people abroad who need it. Nearly 500 metric tons of emergency food—enough to feed about 1.5 million children for a week—are set to expire tomorrow, according to current and former government employees with direct knowledge of the rations. Within weeks, two of those sources told me, the food, meant for children in Afghanistan and Pakistan, will be ash. —Hana Kiros, The Atlantic, July 14, 2025
Children are left to live
with hunger pangs
clawing their stomachs
like a tiger
while enough food
to feed millions
of them for a week
will be tossed in a fire
that roars with orange flames
& adds a new circle
of hell to Dante’s list.
The orange glow
reflecting perfectly
on the man in charge.
Robin Wright lives in Southern Indiana. Her work has appeared in The New Verse News, One Art, As it Ought to Be, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Loch Raven Review, Panoply, Rat’s Ass Review, The Beatnik Cowboy, and others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and a Best New Poets nominee. Her first chapbook, Ready or Not, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2020.
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| Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Shutterstock |
with hunger pangs
clawing their stomachs
like a tiger
while enough food
to feed millions
of them for a week
will be tossed in a fire
that roars with orange flames
& adds a new circle
of hell to Dante’s list.
The orange glow
reflecting perfectly
on the man in charge.
Robin Wright lives in Southern Indiana. Her work has appeared in The New Verse News, One Art, As it Ought to Be, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Loch Raven Review, Panoply, Rat’s Ass Review, The Beatnik Cowboy, and others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and a Best New Poets nominee. Her first chapbook, Ready or Not, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2020.
