SUDANESE LAMENT

by Maia Justine Storm 

Escaping Darfur: Mothers face starvation under trees in Chad —Al Jazeera, June 26, 2026

i give her a breast

that is empty

 

a bowl 

that is broken

 

a cracked cup

 

i offer my daughter

weeds and leaves

 

crushed and boiled

 

but she 

is too hungry to eat them

and i am too sad 

to cry

Maia Justine Storm is a 78-year-old woman living in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She has been an immigration attorney for 25 years and has returned to her adolescent dream of being a poet. Most recently, she has been published in the Poetry Superhighway where she was a Poet of the Week, haikuniverse, Antifa Lit Journal, The Mersey Review, Shot Glass Journal, and forthcoming issues of several more journals.

MYANMAR

by Maia Justine Storm 

as they waited for the UN to help,

my Burmese friends said

coop for coup

and vocalized both the b’s in bomb

 

i knew what they meant

i was too sad to correct them

 

five years later, caught 

between 

the cruelty of two dictators,

one here, one there,

they ask for legal guidance

 

yet once more, sadness gets

in the way

 

as Nurul Amin Shah Alam 

dies, not in Arakan, but here, 

not from genocide

but from cruelty of a lesser,

still homicidal, degree

Maia Justine Storm is a 78-year-old woman living in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She has been an immigration attorney for 25 years and has returned to her adolescent dream of being a poet.  Most recently, she has been published in Poetry Superhighway where she was a Poet of the Week, haikuniverse, Antifa Lit Journal, The Mersey Review, and in forthcoming issues of Procrastinating Writers United and Thema.