Mesquite Bean Coffee vs. Arabian Coffee

Jan Seale

April 22, 2022

Why would you do this, take a holy 

popular elixir and borrow its name?

Who said coffee must be made

with a strict heritage from Africa?

Why not call mesquite bean coffee

Mesquite-aide or Bean Consommé?

Why call your coffee Transfusion,

Jitter Juice? Java? Joe?

But couldn’t this go trending, spreading

to pinto or lima or green pea coffee…

Is there a license, a copyright

  for black, comforting, exotic?

…maybe sneaking on to carrot coffee,

radish coffee, tomato coffee?

Oh come now, aren’t we getting

a bit defensive and upset?

But what does it look like, this sipped 

stuff before it is brewed?

If you must know, like fine sand,

with a few twigs, mere shreds.

Has anyone asked permission to grind beans 

and pods, offer the resulting concoction?

Could you stop making distinctions,

just be open-minded and tolerant?

Liquid trash trees!  Cow feed! That’s what it is!

Vaqueros out on the range with nada else.

Look: It isn’t against the law,

heretical, unhealthy, or misnamed.

No stimulant? Depression could set in, 

upending the universe, stopping civilization.

Here. Calm yourself. Take a sip.

Consider it a peace offering.

Jan Seale lives in South Texas, a place of anomalies. As you might guess, she drinks mesquite bean coffee. She is the 2012 Texas Poet Laureate. Her latest book is Particulars: poems of smallness.