Hungry
In high school I was voted
“Always hungry”
I was an athlete so this
Made sense
I was also a woman, so, yeah,
I was constantly craving.
My hunger is ancestral,
To be of the global majority is to
Look like a meal and be treated like
A snack.
I am always hungry,
I see sweet cinnamon rolls in her hair and black forest glaze on my skin.
Ashanee Kottage is a poet, theatermaker, weaver, and thinker learning what ways to do in this world. (And unlearning all the ways of doing that burnt her out throughout her youth). She loves to write, to act, dance, direct, produce, and do boss shit. At her core, she is a storyteller, a student of the earth, and a friend. Sri Lanka is home, and Washington, D.C. is also now, home. She is starting her second year as a Post-Baccalaureate Fellow at Georgetown University’s Earth Commons and Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics. Her first poetry book Sand & Sweat – about girlhood, womanhood, homeland, and heartbreak – will be self-published on realballersread.com soon!
These poems were supported by DC Mayor Muriel Bowser’s Office of Latino Affairs and through a retreat for Afro-Latin poets produced April 15, 2023 by Day Eight, directed by Jeffrey Banks and Maritza Rivera.
Image: 94rain, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
