Fashion Appetizers (2025 )

Hello to All who are gathered here in the dVerse Universe, a place of pubtalk and poetry. I am your host, Lisa, ready to serve drinks and snacks at your request that satisfy your appetite. Quadrille Monday is where You and Your Muse are prompted to write a 44-word poem. The name for the quadrille form is taken from an 18^th Century dance, but as you may know, it is also a dVerse’ poetic form that will include one word the host (moi, today) provides to you.

I was hungry to find a word that would whet your appetite. One that could apply to many scenarios. One that many other poets have tackled in myriad ways. It afflicts any living creature. For non-humans, from fungi to giraffes, hunger is mostly a biological necessity that keeps the being alive. For humans it can be such an affliction, especially in territories under siege by war (e.g. Ukraine and Palestine,) or in famine (e.g. Sudan, Mali, and Haiti.) But for us humans we have hungers beyond biological that affect us on a continuum from from being mildly irritating to a consuming obsession.

Poets know all about hunger in finding just the right word or articulating the best distillation of a thought, feeling, idea, persuasion, etc.

The first poem I found has such a cute title, like hearing one’s stomach grumble just before lunch. Unfortunately this little hunger by one person for other persons’ precious homes is anything but cute. (Click on the author links for each poem to learn more about these fascinating poets from around the world.)

Little Hunger
by Richard Murphy (b.1927 – d.2018)

I drove to Little Hunger promontory
	Looking for pink stone
in roofless houses huddled by the sea
	to buy to build my own.

Hovels to live in, ruins to admire
	from a car cruising by,
the weathered face caught in a sunset fire,
	hollowed with exility;

whose gradual fall my purchase would complete,
	clearing them off the land,
the seven cabins needed to create
	the granite house I planned

Once mine, I’d work on their dismemberment,
	threshold, lintel, wall;
and pick a hearthstone from a rubble fragment
	to make it integral.

The next one cleverly uses ginger and its absence to express so much more about what it symbolizes.  I’ve never seen cooking ingredients used quite this way before.  Kudos to Ms. Su.

Ginger
By Adrienne Su

We’ll affirm its arrival
when it’s not in the titles
of recipes in which it figures
quietly, as moderate slivers.

When it’s always available,
not lumped with root vegetables
nor flecked with blue mold.

When everyone knows
not to bite the large pieces.

When everyone preaches
the best means of peeling
(knife, spoon, or not-peeling)
and disagrees, without violence.

When its unexpected absence
causes fundamental hunger
but it’s like running out of sugar:
you can ask any neighbor.

When the nation remembers
how it treated as barbaric
the eaters of garlic
as they fled persecution

and sees its reflection
in black-and-white photos
of  mobs against risotto.

The final poem today is by an individual whose name will be recognizable for most.  Today I took the time to read Mr. Gibran’s biography that you’ll find if you click on his name.  What a fascinating human being and what an interesting life he led!  There is something so satisfying and profoundly wise in what he says here. 

On Buying and Selling
By Kahlil Gibran(b.1883—d.1931)

And a merchant said, Speak to us of
Buying and Selling.
     And he answered and said:
     To you the earth yields her fruit, and you
shall not want if you but know how to fill
your hands.
     It is in exchanging the gifts of the earth
that you shall find abundance and be satisfied.
     Yet unless the exchange be in love and
kindly justice, it will but lead some to greed
and others to hunger.
 
     When in the market place you toilers of
the sea and fields and vineyards meet the
weavers and the potters and the gatherers of
spices,—
     Invoke then the master spirit of the earth,
to come into your midst and sanctify the
scales and the reckoning that weighs value
against value.
 
     And suffer not the barren-handed to take
part in your transactions, who would sell
their words for your labour.
     To such men you should say,
      “Come with us to the field, or go with
our brothers to the sea and cast your net;
     For the land and the sea shall be bountiful
to you even as to us.”
 
     And if there come the singers and the
dancers and the flute players,—buy of their
gifts also.
     For they too are gatherers of fruit and
frankincense, and that which they bring,
though fashioned of dreams, is raiment
 and food for your soul.
 
     And before you leave the market place,
see that no one has gone his way with
empty hands.
     For the master spirit of the earth shall
not sleep peacefully upon the wind till the
needs of the least of you are satisfied.

We have come to the place where you put your proverbial pen to paper and warm it with your poetic spirit's will in words.

• Pen us a poem of precisely 44 words (not counting the title), including some form of the word hunger. 
• Post your Quadrille piece on your blog and link back to this post.
• Place the link to your actual post (not your blog url) on the Mister Linky page.
• Don’t forget to check the little box to accept use/privacy policy.
• Please visit other blogs and comment on their posts!
• Have fun (but only if you want to!)

Prompt is open until Saturday, February 28, at 3pm NYT.