DAILY BREAD

by Karen Warinsky

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread: Feeding the 5000, relief on the door of the Grossmünster, Zurich, Switzerland.

Pope Leo XIV has condemned the “barbarity” of the war in Gaza and the “indiscriminate use of force” as Gaza’s civil defence agency said at least 93 Palestinians had been killed queueing for food and Israel issued fresh evacuation orders for areas packed with displaced people. —The Guardian, July 20, 2025

Give us this day our daily dose

of violence and war

hunger and strife

that we may see clearly

how the people in charge

truly view others, treat others,

casting their nets

not for sustenance

but to trap us all 

in their ill-imagined world,

how our struggle to untangle the truth

is worthy and righteous.

 

Bake the bread of this poem

with sunflower seeds and sifted flour

yogurt, eggs and oil,

with love, hope,

virtue and decency.

May it counteract the poisonous actions

of mad governments

as they seek their ends with any means

trampling on innocents

born in an unfortunate place

living in a fraught time

caught in an ancient conflict,

whose only crime

is a desire to preserve themselves

with the staff of life.

Karen Warinsky  has published poetry widely since 2011. She is the author of four collections: Gold in Autumn (2020) and Sunrise Ruby (2022 Human Error Publishing,) Dining with War (2023 Alien Buddha Press) and Beauty & Ashes (Kelsay Books, 2025). Her poem “Mirage” won first place in the 2024 Ekphrastic Poetry Trust, she is a 2023 Best of the Net nominee and a former finalist of the Montreal International Poetry Contest. Warinsky coordinates Poets at Large, a group that performs spoken word in MA and CT.

OF BAFFLES AND BUOYS

by Ruth Nicholson

Adrees Latif

/

Reuters

Texas Department of Public Safety troopers ride past buoys while patrolling the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass on July 29, 2023. —Texas Public Radio, August 3, 2023

Our bird feeder is a seed-rich cylinder
with holes, perches, and a baffle 
for deterring squirrels.  Baffle—like
a wire cage—sometimes traps
a hungry sparrow, leaves it hanging
upside down, tiny toes entangled.
Left alone too long, the bird dies.

We rescued one such bird today,
while TV news announced a migrant
drowned in Rio Grande, thwarted by
new floating buoys—like a necklace
of enormous beads that rotate.
Beneath the buoys, nets that snare.

Attempts to climb over, go under, swim
to the riverbank—meant to fail.
Migrant netted, left for dead.
Not a baffle to ignore.  Pay attention,
Texas and the rest of us; God’s eye
is on the sparrow.

Ruth Nicholson is a retired library assistant and avid student of nature, especially birds and wildflowers. She writes from South Carolina, where she now has more poet-friends discovered through Zoom during the pandemic. Her poems have appeared in Illuminations, Passages North, Emrys Journal, Jasper, and Fall Lines, among others, and she has work in the forthcoming edition of Kakalak.