Hungry Ghosts Poem by Linda Marie Van Tassell

A gaunt shadow gazes across the field.
A cold wind walks along the cabin walls.
Her eyes fall back into orbits unsealed,
her clothes ragged as rent burial palls.
Hunger has hammered her heart in a cage.
Her belly is curved like an empty bowl,
and her son appears of much older age
like leather stretched over a gentle soul.
The sky is stained with beetroots and honey
like the borscht she made in happier years
fore grain fell like ashes on Povolzhye
and turned the rain into rivers of tears.
A broken dish bleeds upon the table.
I see the ghost of her sweet son, Abel.