by Keishla Rivera-Lopez

The people of this place aren’t here anymore.
The bodega where you’d get a butter roll and a coffee lightandsweet
for less than five dollars no longer exists.
The people who called you chula have gone
to cheaper towns in the south because the rent was too much.
The Puerto Rican and Dominican storefronts and negocios that once
existed at great lengths, populating the main streets,
Bloomfield Avenue
First Avenue
Mount Prospect Avenue
disappeared.

The sounds of neighborhood kids playing baseball
at Branch Brook Park have gotten quieter, almost to a whisper,
and will become an echo,
like the coquito carts.
The go to spot for rice and beans and pernil or pollo asado
burned down,
and was never rebuilt.
I remember the circular aluminum pans stuffed to capacity.
They burned my hand but provided so much for so little.

My mom says we can no longer find good plátanos because
they no longer import them from the Caribbean.
Every now and then she manages to find los aguacates buenos,
que son grandes, unlike the hass avocado.
Since I’ve left the barrio,
I tell her that’s all I manage to find at Trader Joe’s.
She says it’s not the same,
pero por lo menos es algo,
a modicum resemblance of home,
to eat with my riceandbeans.
I think to myself.

I walk through my old neighborhood,
and I smile when I hear Caribbean Spanish.
The neighborhood is no longer the same, but
the Avenida Puerto Rico sign still remains
at the intersection of Bloomfield Ave and Broadway
where the salsa record stores and Puerto Rican restaurants
and hair salons used to be.
To remind everyone that we were once here,
even though we no longer remain.
Even though the high rises and high rent prices
encroach, this neighborhood is still ours.

Keishla Rivera-Lopez is a poet, writer, and scholar. She received a PhD in American Studies from Rutgers University–Newark, where she was a 2019–20 Dean’s Dissertation Fellow. She was born and raised in Newark to Puerto Rican migrants and reflects on what it means to be a child of diaspora in her scholarship and writing. Keishla enjoys writing poetry, short-stories, and essays from her travel and everyday experiences as a Puerto Rican woman. She also enjoys experimenting with different sazons and sofritos, hiking, dancing and traveling.

Featured Image: Lawrence Krayn – @xquisite_Grit