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| Ropa Viejo |
Yet soul food & southern food are the same thing though Inga is a common tree flowering in March when raucous monkeys peer up at toucans near the dam at Havana where you chose principle over compromise . . . reading Galeano thinking—Life isn't simple after all & Birds fly North of the tropics & Ordering the Daily Special is usually a bad idea—you exchanged chaos for order . . . form inverted function [like Jakobsen said media changes poetry] as écriture noire was a separatist movement in Martinique where fruit bats roost in caves with Didelphids . . . by June rains soaked roaming tapir alert yet cautious as you were vigilant at El Barracón eating Ropa Viejo amid the sounds of crowds & the smell of tap beer . . . you were privileged but everyone has a cross to bear since Phyllis Wheatley was a member of the Black Arts Movement after Che Guevara called you a “belligerent force.”
Clara B. Jones is a retired scientist, currently practicing poetry in Silver Spring, MD (USA). As a woman of color, she writes about the “performance” of identity, alienation, and power and conducts research on experimental poetry, as well as, radical publishing. Clara is author of three chapbooks, and her poems, reviews, essays, and interviews have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous venues.