“On our earth, before writing was invented, before the printing press was invented, poetry flourished. That is why we know poetry is like bread; it should be shared by all, by scholars and by peasants, by all our vast, incredible, extraordinary family of humanity”
~Pablo Neruda
“In one crucial way, food differs from writing: food is temporary. It is exactly this fact, as many a writer will tell you, wherein the sublime pleasure of cooking really lies. After a long day of trying to be immortal, or at least get to the end of the blank page or screen—rather symbolically hitting SAVE—there is something satisfying in getting your hands dirty, in making something that has, necessarily, an obvious end point. With food, the better it is, the less it sticks around. (Except the way good food ‘sticks to your ribs’ in the parlance of where I come from.) Temporariness is one of food’s best qualities, making it something other than the chore that good writing can be. This is the opposite of good reading, in which the better it is the faster it flies. It is these fleeting yet everlasting pleasures that this anthology explores.”
~Kevin Young, Ed of
“The Hungry Ear, poems of food &
drink”
To bring my trio of consecutive food posts back to the beginning, I have
chosen a poem that takes me back to my Caribbean roots, and cleverly recalls one of my favorite beach treats... coco frío!
From “The Hungry Ear,”
a great anthology interweaving poetry, food and drink.
Coca-Cola and Coco
Frío
On his first visit
to Puerto Rico,
island of family
folklore,
the fat boy
wandered
from table to
table
with his mouth
open.
At every table,
some great-aunt
would steer him
with cool spotted hands
to a glass of
Coca-Cola.
One even sang to
him, in all the English
she could
remember, a Coca-Cola jingle
from the forties.
He drank obediently, though
he was bored with
this potion, familiar
from soda
fountains in Brooklyn.
Then at a roadside
stand off the beach, the fat boy
opened his mouth
to coco frío, a coconut
chilled, then
scalped by a machete
so that a straw
could inhale the clear milk.
The boy tilted the
green shell overhead
and drooled
coconut milk down his chin;
suddenly, Puerto
Rico was not Coca-Cola
or Brooklyn, and
neither was he.
For years
afterward, the boy marveled at an island
where the people
drank Coca-Cola
and sang jingles
from World War II
in a language they
did not speak,
while so many coconuts
in the trees
sagged heavy with
milk, swollen
and unsuckled.
