“The Confession” © Ken Tomaro

 

Gaza Buffet

Children in Gaza are starving. I think to myself as I push away the third half eaten plate of randomly assorted foods at this southern style buffet. I stack the plates on top of each other and feel the squish of French fries becoming mashed potatoes, of hamburger steak becoming neither hamburger nor steak. None of it is particularly delicious, I dare say even good, but quantity has a quality all it’s own. As I wait for the waitress to collect my plates and refill my soda for the fifth time, I try to calculate how many starving kids in Gaza I could have been fed with the food I am throwing away. Maybe two per plate, maybe more. Seven? Ten, if I raid the dessert bar. I realize what I am doing and I get choked up over those starving kids in Gaza. I feel genuine shame and disgust at the food I am wasting and everyone around me is wasting. We could probably feed a thousand kids in Gaza if we all chipped in. We could probably feed a thousand starving kids right here in our own town. “Someone should do something.” I mutter to myself as I waddle over to make a sundae.

Living Bread

The Christians don’t want all students to have free lunch. Not all Christians mind you. Just the capital C Christians! The ones that parade Jesus around like he’s some sort of mascot.
They feel that kids should have to pay for their breakfast and lunch at school or go without. They don’t realize how hard it is to hear the teacher when your stomach is growling or how difficult it is to focus when your stomach is eating itself. They say it shouldn’t be their responsibility to feed someone else’s kid. Their tax dollars are better spent on bombs and walls. They forgot to ask WWJD? And what would the only begotten son of their god do in this situation? He feed the damn kids! Jesus loved to eat, to drink, to teach. He’s at a wedding…have some more wine. He’s walking through a field of grain….popping kernels. Giving a sermon…loaves and fishes for everybody! Hell, even his last supper was a supper. He even fed the guy who was going to betray him. Pointed him out with a soggy bit of bread.
The very Demigod they love to remind everyone that they follow knew that people pay better attention when they aren’t thinking about where their next meal is coming from. Jesus knew you had to feed a man’s stomach before you could feed his mind, you have to fill their bellies before you can fill their souls. Maybe the Capital C Christians missed that lesson in Sunday school, maybe they weren’t paying attention, maybe they skipped breakfast that day.

 

Richard Bell lives in Greenville, North Carolina. He spends half his nights and most of his days working to give people more time on this earth through dialysis. What little time he has to himself, he spends with his wife and daughter or drinking scotch and writing poetry, essays, or whatever satisfies the itch. His work has appeared in Ariel Chart, The Reedy Branch Review, and Wildsound Writing Festival.

Bestselling author Ken Tomaro is the self-proclaimed Poet Laureate of the Cleveland sewer system, whose work reflects everyday life with depression. His poetry has appeared in several online and print journals and explores the common themes we all experience. Sometimes blunt, often dark, but always grounded in reality.