Freedom Poetry Voices

The years of beans and rice

She had read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.

She knew the recipes in Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappé by heart.

She had absorbed comments from an engineer with a pocket protector like:

I didn’t know vegetarians could be fat.

She had seen Evil, its inky dye, like the ink from a squid,

Designed to confuse. She had Fought it

And come out the other side

And she knew its look from a distance.

The beans were: black beans, lentils, garbanzo, navy, white.

A pot could last a week, first soaking overnight, then cooking all day.

Working in the warehouse she could eat free cheddar cheese and tortillas.

Luce’s mom made tamales Luce sold by the dozen on paydays.

She would buy a pack, and she worked hard pulling cheese on her pallet jack, 

She could finish off the dozen in a day.

She packed light as a feather, her packing was poetry in motion

As she moved from barrio room to housesitting gig.

Her hair was tangled and wild: Her eyes were clear like deep lakes.

When she laughed the room would vibrate like jelly; it was a big laugh.

When she went to the professor’s door to say:

I will be a professor too one day.

The professor laughed and called her

Ridiculous.

She was given a Herkimer Diamond by her friend:

The black imperfection is what makes it valuable.

She lived for weeks on the grapefruit from the tree growing outside her door.

The sky would be heavy with green monsoon clouds.

She had done the unimaginable through obstinance.

She survived.

©Nadine Alexis Bolkhovitinov