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Why I Like Ketchup It’s hard to pay attention to what’s on the board, to care that three times seven is twenty-one, that our state bird is a robin or that I’m supposed to say isn’t, not ain’t. All I can think about is my empty belly, and the smell of boiling hot dogs. I’m so hungry, I hurt. It’s my favorite school-lunch day, though. The ʼdogs are good, but those little ketchup packages make it the best for me. I like the tiny crackers in cellophane bags when we have chili, too, but they get smashed up too fast. Ketchup packs travel better in my pockets. I take as many as I can get, before the lunch lady, Mrs. Penny, with that net thing on her head, gives me the eye. I have to put some back. She’s cool though. Sometimes she’ll slip me an extra apple, a bag of chips or a cookie, secret-like. My friend takes some extra ketchup packs for me, too. He knows I like them. He never asks me why. And I never tell him, ʼcause that hurts my belly, too. Mrs. Penny said once that some old white guy said ketchup was a vegetable. He sure was dumb even if he was the President. Even a third grader knows that ketchup comes from tomatoes and that tomatoes are fruit. I don’t know about mustard though. Maybe it’s a vegetable. Whatever it is, you can have it. On the bus home I open one ketchup packet. Squeezing the thick sweetness into my mouth, I let it sit a minute on my tongue before it slips and slides down my throat. Only one. That’s my rule ʼcause it’s getting near the end of the month. It’ll make supper taste better for me and Mama. All we’ve got left is stale bread that’s pretty hard to swallow and tomorrow’s Saturday.
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Metabolic Memory When my stomach is so empty that it churns your name, I cover my mouth-only to realize that the sound is incontestable, coming from the depths of me. A guttural echo squeezing sad memories through kidneys, but no filtration system can distill you- or flush out the toxins. We are the science experiment gone terribly wrong, abandoned etch-a-sketch on trees, the Pandora's box I don’t dare open, hidden in the basement of my mind’s corridors. When my stomach is so empty that it churns your name, I begin to nibble on remnants of you. The times I thought I was in love with your Cheshire smile and angular nose, but I was really just dancing with my own darkest shadow, sinking the ship and biting the dust. I was only craving a cool glass of attention paired along with a heaping bowl of belonging. My stomach doesn't speak English, and thus I have become illiterate to its primal cries. Twists and knots of you are seeking some sort of indecipherable plea for an exit, an escape. Like closing the door with a heart trembling in the throat only to be picked off the branch. I was low hanging fruit, and you were the gardener. The snakes warned you not to pick me, but you did and now look at the mess behind us. I have become an arsonist, burning down the bridges we used to stroll on. My darling, I am no sweet apple, my core is bitter and skin tougher than steel. How you managed to seep in through the layered amour I could never understand. But you see, when my stomach is so empty it churns your name, and instead of feeding the fire inside of me, I vomit. Words on the page and paint to the canvas, flame to the match and foot through the door I run. And run and run and run, and just when my legs could splinter in half, I draw your profile in the dark with a frenzy of fireflies, over and over and over. I draw your profile until I can’t remember what you look like anymore. I draw your profile and the churning simmers; I draw your profile until you fizzle and fade from view. I run back to the place I once called home, and this time, when my stomach is so empty it churns for a different kind of love. One that might finally let me feel full. -A  Ashlynn is a multi-disciplinary artist, spoken word poet, and dreamer, who recently won 1st place as a finalist at the Guelph and Toronto Poetry Slams, and has several solo exhibitions around the GTA. Her work centres on the notion of humans as storytellers, by creating a sense of embodied art-making connected to the earth. For Ashlynn, art is a vehicle to transport, translate, and transform ideas of life, love, loss, and finding her voice through imaginative avenues.
Website: ashlynndoljac.format.com Instagram: @artistic_allegories Youtube: @ashlynndoljac1318 Fast If you were to ask me about hunger I would tell you it's like being held in empty arms for too long, purse strings tightened at the parched mouth drawn closed on unmet needs. Thirst is a dry river bed, a dead cricket's leg, trough of dust, fat snowflake uncaught by young tongues. And after the deep well no longer cares what it might hold, at the first bite, the first sip the animal need to take all not to taste, but to fill, not to quench, but to flow. But what do I know of real hunger, true thirst? If I could pack it up, I'd send it– the wasted corporate buffet, the bottled waterfall. I swear, I would send it to you. Fast, I'd fast.  Ellen Rowland is the author of two collections of haiku/senryu as well as the book Everything I Thought I Knew, essays on living, learning and parenting outside the status quo. Her writing has appeared in numerous literary journals and in several poetry anthologies, most recently The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy. Her debut collection of full-length poems, No Small Thing, is forthcoming from Fernwood Press in 2023. She lives off the grid with her family on an island in Greece. Connect with her on Instagram @rowland.ellen
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