Calabar Magazine

by Patricia Spears Jones At the performance in February at Le Dakar, Senegalese Chef Pierre Thiam’s Clinton Hill eatery, Kim Lyons, a poet opined, unlike in Manhattan, directions in Brooklyn are vague, things are not “between,” but near or far. There’s no real single grid in Brooklyn, but rather many grids, so being “off the [...]

by Patricia Spears Jones, February 2009 The editor asked me to write about being unemployed and my job search.  Well.  It’s hard.  It’s boring.  It’s, as of this writing, ineffective.  It’s not for sissies. Unemployment is something I’ve gone through a few times before, but nothing like this.  People keep talking about a PLAN B [...]

by Patricia Spears Jones, May 2009 I am exhausted.   Been out of work since end of October and well, being out of work; looking for work is work.  The editor asked for something on the environment, but this time, I got to talk politics, the economy and very ugly buildings. We have a new President [...]

by Patricia Spears Jones, June/July 2008 The heat broke this morning after a storm of noisy violence.  Cats were cowering from side of Brooklyn to the other.  But we welcome the coolness and the chance to walk about and breathe without gasping.  In a way, that is how it feels to contemplate changes in the [...]

by Patricia Spears Jones, July 2008 Food is a subject so fraught, I am not sure I want to deal with it.  Of course, Atim who is tall and slender probably can eat anything she wants.  But I am short and round and when I wasn’t looking the pounds begat pounds making food both a [...]

by Patricia Spears Jones, January/February 2007 On the last day of 2006, I bought a Cesaria Evora CD because I stopped by Calabar to say Happy New Year to Atim and Heloise.  Before that I’d said my prayers in the Botanic Garden where the Ever Blooming cherry tree in the Japanese Garden was in bloom.  [...]

by Patricia Spears Jones, September/October 2007 I love writing for Calabar Magazine.  Her themes take me out of my own comfort zone and this one is on business and finance.  Hey I have a full time job; my passion and work as a poet and cultural critic, this column.  I make okay dollars, i. e. [...]

by Patricia Spears Jones, December 2007 Year’s end, new beginnings?  All I know is that the winter solstice brought the grayest days I’ve ever seen in New York City, a kind of gray that Melville talks about at the beginning of Moby Dick. Sullen. Still.  The kind of gray that says please snow, rain, DO [...]

by Patricia Spears Jones, March/April 2007 The annual New Year’s card arrived from Tomie Arai—a most happy Pig.  This is the Pig’s year and already there’s a lot of rooting out of bad influences, bad people, bad ideas even as strange talk pollutes the airwaves.  Dead blondes in the Bahamas, missing billions in Iraq, Dick [...]

by Patricia Spears Jones, April 2006 At the performance at Le Dakar, Kim Lyons opined, unlike Manhattan, directions in Brooklyn are vague, things are not between but near or far. There’s no real grid in Brooklyn, so being “off the grid” means nothing. Bed-Stuy a historically Black and culturally rich locale has its moments of [...]