My Heart Is a Food Desert

By Lolita Stewart-White

          --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).

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• 9/6 / Meet the Artist with visiting poet-in-residence Felicia Zamora / The Library at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 6:00 pm EST / Free

• 9/6 / Poetry Reading with visiting poet-in-residence Felicia Zamora and local poet Lolita Stewart-White / The Library at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 7:30 pm EST / Free

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