“It is important for people to realize that we can make progress against world hunger, that world hunger is not hopeless. The worst enemy is apathy.” – Reverend David Beckmann, president of Alliance to End Hunger.
My Name Is World Hunger
My name is world hunger.
I am both well-known and ignored.
I appear anywhere around the globe
where war has assaulted and destroyed
dignity and peace. I live where
there is too much or too little water.
I flourish where greed sings
every important song and
silences smaller voices.
I was created, not born.
Like disease, I am not normal.
Yet, I long to be healed,
to be in tune with the whole,
rounded into softness,
not rounded inside the bellies
of my victims.
My name is world hunger.
I did not choose existence.
May I slip inside history,
remembered as a shameful plague,
corrected and shaped
inside a power known as peace.
I am willing, so willing
to belong to the past,
gone, but never forgotten.
published in For A Better World 2023
terrypetersen 