HUNGER

	By William Michaelian

	Long ago,
	on a street corner
	in the city where I was born,
	there was a dump truck
	full of large green cabbages
	parked in the mud.
	The driver of the truck
	raised the bed,
	forming a mountain of cabbage
	on the ground.
	Suddenly, from nowhere,
	several dozen women appeared,
	as if they had been waiting
	beneath the pavement itself.
	In exchange for their tears
	and in some cases
	a few small coins,
	the truck driver,
	an unshaven man in his sixties,
	handed cabbages to the women.
	A short while later
	the cabbages,
	the women,
	and the truck driver
	were gone.
	But hunger remained.
	For a long time,
	hunger remained.


--
Several of William Michaelian's poems and short stories have appeared
in Ararat. Many have also been translated into Armenian, and have been
published in Yerevan in Garun, Grakan Tert, Aghpyur, and Artasamanyan
Grakanutyun. The author maintains an extensive website at
http://www.williammichaelian.com/