My Heart Is a Food Desert

--dedicated to Vanessa Garcia and the Homegrown Crew


Dirt floor
Corner store
tucked beneath
an overpass


My heart is a food desert:

Its deep red
sealed in jars
like sour pickles
or deviled eggs


My heart is a food desert:

Black fist
that ferments
laments dissents
in what can never be said


My heart is a food desert:

Wasps of dread
Wasps of dread
Wasps of dread
Wasps of dread


My heart is a food desert:

brothel

of bones
empty rooms
(un)fed


My heart is a food desert:

Dreams of a fine man
waiting
in dark-green fields
the color of cabbage and kale


My heart is a food desert:

Its beats—boarded-up Sundays
its thumps—homeless hymns
its drums—snuffed-out prayers




*Note: The impetus for this poem came from a prompt assigned by Vanessa Garcia, Mentor for the Homegrown BIPOC Playwrighting Development Program. Playwrights were asked to take advantage of the senses—all of them—to enhance our feel for both character and place.

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Lolita Stewart-White is a poet, playwright, and filmmaker who lives and works in Miami. She is a Pushcart nominee and the winner of the Paris-American Readers Series. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Green Mountains Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, African American Review, Iowa Review, and Boston Review. She has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Palm Beach Poetry Festival, and the Sundance Screenwriters Lab. Stewart-White is a part of City Theatre's BIPOC playwrighting development program. Her plays have been performed at the Adrienne Arsht Center and Mainstreet Players. Stewart-White's films have been exhibited at the Los Angeles Pan African Film and Arts Festival, Seattle Langston Hughes's Film Festival, and Miami's Museum of Contemporary Art (Moca).