Review of Our Lady of the Hunger: Poems

Our Lady of the Hunger: Poems

by Kat Georges

Three Rooms Press $15.00 (paper)

Kat Georges, among other creative efforts, is the co-founder and editor of Three Rooms Press, based in New York City. Her poems are urban and contemporary with humor in the mix. In “Text Me if You Can” she points out what we may know “So much was done before the age of the text message: / Pyramids and cathedrals, empires’ rise and fall / Small wars, civil wars, world wars, atomic wars / And art galore – enough to fill galleries and crypts.” But then turns it to humorous insight. “And it was all so much fun back in the days when / Children did not ignore parents by texting at dinner / And emotions were not aligned pharmaceutically and / Even the brokenhearted found a way to laugh / When the fat lady slipped on a banana peel.” The poems are snapshots of life in the city including a man wearing a papier-mache white rabbit’s head, young girls on the way to school telling the rain to stop, and the anonymous members of “Women’s Group”. “they went around the circle / each woman baring her soul / with their life’s current / unbearable problem.” The poet, who was there with a friend, blurted out she could not find time for herself. Among the unsigned index card responses she got suggestions for getting a massage, getting more exercise, and quitting caffeine. “only one card / made any real sense // it read ‘stop thinking / so much about / yourself’ // a revelation indeed”.