Things Are Going Quite Well, Aren’t They?
Hello! Another week has passed. Another Thursday is upon us. The leaves are falling. It’s dark out at 5 o‘clock again. I’m all sneezy and tired. So, I am going to get right to the point today.
As I have to assume you know, 40-some million people have lost access to food assistance in the past week. In the richest country in the world, millions will go to bed hungry for no real reason other than that some billionaires and politicians want them too. And because so many people listened to those billionaires and politicians when they tried to convince everybody that immigrants and trans people and poor people “defrauding” these bare bones programs for peanuts, those evil dipshits get to decide when and what your neighbors get to eat.
And hey, let’s get into the “what” they get to eat, since there are so many freaks out there who want to take fuckin‘ Sherlock Holmes’ magnifying glass to every receipt a low-income person comes home with. Unequivocally, I do not care if people on SNAP or other government assistance buy Oatmeal Cream Pies. I do not care if they buy a premade Pokemon birthday cake from the bakery instead of a $1 box mix because their child wanted the Pokemon cake. I could never conceivably give a shit if someone was buying gourmet steaks with their food stamps every night. My brain ain’t too too good these days but because it has not been shattered in the precise ways these pocket-watching weirdos‘ brains have been, I am not a rube that thinks of myself as a temporarily embarrassed millionaire. I am not a rube that thinks the reason i’m not there yet is whats in my neighbors fridge.
And if you’re just so outraged about what your neighbors eat, you could actually make a difference. Why are there food deserts in so many of these low-income, often nonwhite communities, leaving folks with a Dollar General and a run down gas station with literally nowhere to get the fresh veggies and calorie dense proteins that you look down on them for allegedly neglecting. Why is it that consumer culture over the last 50 years has increasingly minimized the cost of foods with less nutritional value while healthier foods become more and more inaccessible. Why is every part of our political system designed to punish us and raise prices and keep people, keep children hungry.
Because I don’t know if you’ve ever gone to bed hungry. If you have, I think you’re probably not out there yelling about people eating too many Clams or whatever the hell. But it sucks! It sucks worse when you’re a kid and you don’t have any control over the situation. I say this very solemnly with as much conviction as possible, if you feel an ounce of glee, i-told-you-so, of holier than though personal responsibility bullshit, while people are going hungry for no reason at all, there is a rot in your soul that I don’t know if you can still fix. I am not that person and so I can’t imagine what it is to redeem yourself after sacrificing that part of your humanity. But you are fucking up. And I am not a religious person but if you are a self-professed Christian doing this, I hope you know how much Christ would hate your guts. I hope you know how, anyone, in a functioning society that has not taught us to tear at each others throats for the sake of protecting the rich, would be ostracizing you for this antisocial behavior. And if you’re someone who benefitted from these programs in the past and is still mad about them helping people now, you have lost everything that might have one day made you whole and you will not know peace in your lifetime.
I could to on and on about this. It makes me very mad. Instead, I am going to leave you with a poem. But first, a whole-hearted plea to donate to your local food bank, participate in mutual aid, cook some meals, do what you can if you can. And if you’re reading this and struggling, my email is on my website.
iowa nice as millions go hungry
we have constructed our rot with brick walls, bootstraps. we take care of each other. until we don’t. until someone wants to reap the harvest of our bone. we throw our plucked eyes over the wall at each other and let them disappear in their descent. we hide severed fingers in the mortar when the clay crumbles upon itself maybe the memory of what we’ve held can hold the aftermath of us.
i ate buttered noodles out of the family’s puke bowl and when i fell asleep shortly after i dreamed of a cement mixer stomach it turns and turns until the poison and the nectar in me become one and when i awake the ebt card is being declined at hy-vee and we hold hands while the self check robot yells at us and we realize we’d probably settle for the poison a crow sits on top of the burnt out ‘A’ on Walmart’s facade. the bell ringers ring their christmas bells, and inside the cashiers miss their holiday dinner while the waltons feast on our snapped rib cages, on our very own stomachs. down the road, the food bank is covered in gasoline and snow.
the pangs the pangs the pangs you hear your neighbor sing for joy, in blinding pain and you savor the air vibrating in the dearth we’ve cultivated you are a chasm outlined with grease you cannot grip anything before it evaporates call it sleight of hand call it the rot it is and regardless when you reach for hands and find fists when you look up and see stars and you don’t know if you’re in aweor if you’re concussed, when you need to feel what it felt like on your 10th birthday, the last one before your parents divorce when you need it to feel how it felt at graduation with the world at your feet when you need to remember the calm the silk wrapped around you on your wedding day, before your own dissolution, it will all be gone. the emptiness is you. somewhere a child goes hungry and so you call their parent slurs. you’ve forfeited what could have made you warm. we hold the smalls of each others backs and we paint each others faces on rumbling stomachs.
