after a rainstorm, then stretch out and gaze up
at heaven, intensely aware that heaven, el cielo,
is also close, not just remote.
Hope is here, all over this starving isle,
mixed up with the tragic hunger that forces
gentle people to slaughter pigeons
in parks,
plucking feathers,
roasting, swallowing,
then kissing
between gulps
of starlight.
Success
The singing dog
Matchmaking is as mysterious as the sonar
that emanates from bats in a seaside cave’s
darkness.
It’s enough to know that Liana and Amado
belong
together.
Understanding is not needed,
only closeness.
Shape-Shifting
Amado and Liana
Slowly at first
then swiftly
we emerge
from our childhood selves
renewed as two nearly grown creatures
who have learned to speak courageously,
abandoning shy silence
in order to accept
wonder.
Now we are almost as attracted
to each other’s words and thoughts
as to hands, bodies, eyes, smiles, lips,
sight sound taste scent
touch.
Love in a Time of Wonder
Liana and Amado and the singing dog
Hunger
or love?
Hunger
before
love.
Love beyond hunger
hunger love hunger
love hunger love love.
Ode to Paz
Amado and Liana
Roaming
nomad
unpredictable
visitor
exhaling
aromas
of
love’s
hunger
and
hunger’s
love.
Garden Song
Amado and Liana
Once again we visit the old folks, who grant us a gift
of pumpkin seeds, and the promise of avocados
from a potted tree, the slender trunk wrapped
in copper bracelets just in case old legends
are true, about the magical properties of shiny
red metal, said to combat plant diseases,
or turn into a poison
if too much is received.
Paz is with us this time, Abuela and her pony
both too happy to cling to childhood fears of feral dogs.
The garden is lush and bountiful
like a dream-forest, overflowing with marvels.
Roots.
Leaves.
Fruit.
Time seems to stop
as soon as we see food growing.
Now it’s our job to go home and plant, eat, share.
Love
Amado
Plant, harvest,
right away,
no delay,
it’s the only way
to feel hopeful!
Beyond Love
Liana
My parents worry—are we breaking rules?
No one knows exactly how long it has been
since anyone in this family grew
our own food.
Within Love
Amado and Liana
We convince our reluctant parents, then urge them
to help us dig holes and bury seeds, as the reality
of unimagined possibilities
begins
to take
root!
Our Parents Warn Us That We’re Taking Chances
Liana and Amado
Being independent.
Making our own decisions.
Risking trouble in exchange
for producing anything that exceeds
monthly rations.
What if we’re suspected of planting crops
in order to sell food on the black market?
Our Answer
Amado and Liana
We’re hungry.
Earth helps us.
Let’s grow.
The Names of Love 1
Liana
Cielo tierra hoja mar sol
luna estrella esperanza.
The Names of Love 2
Amado
She calls me
sky earth leaf sea sun
moon stars hope.
I answer that wherever there is hope there is love
and whenever there is peace we have hope
and eating enough is part of feeling peaceful.
The Names of Love 3
Liana and Amado
Vastness invisible past present future
there’s no end to claiming and naming
this limitless
wilderness
of mysteries.
Our lives.
Balseros
Liana
We still sneak out of our houses at night,
despite our parents’ warnings, protests,
and futile attempts at punishment.
Nothing they take from us matters,
because we have no luxuries, no privileges,
just hunger
and time.
So we sneak out carrying fireflies in bottles
whenever we can’t find batteries for flashlights.
Needing a place to be alone, we’re led by Paz.
The seaside cave is a plain one, simple.
No stalactites or crystals, just smooth walls
marked with red, blue, and yellow pictures
of eyes, wings,
hands, hearts.
We’re not alone here.
Inner tubes.
Ropes.
Rough brown gourds
filled with fresh water.
Dried guavas, stale bread,
and peeled spears of sugar cane.
Two people, a young man
and his heavily pregnant wife
are clearly terrified by our presence
as they try to hide in a dark corner,
unable to evade our captive insects’
pulsing light.
Leaving the island is forbidden by law
and it’s equally illegal
to know that someone is planning to flee.
We’re required
to report escapees
to the authorities
but how can we
betray strangers
who are simply
hoping
to avoid
the same
plague of hunger
that has tormented us
for so long?
Anyone who takes the time to paint
murals of primary colors on cave walls
deserves a chance to float freely
los balseros
the rafters
fleeing refugees
buoyed by hope.
Throwing Oneself Into the Sea
Amado
Before he chose prison, my brother considered
the possibility of building a raft and soaring away
on a flimsy contraption made from inner tubes
and rope…
but the chances of surviving are unknown, perhaps
fifty-fifty
or less.
No one can count the tens of thousands of bodies
already lost halfway between here and the other side
of the Florida Straits—Key West, Miami,
the United States of Plenty.
If I had enough hoarded food to make it safely across
days or weeks on waves, surrounded by sharks,
would I nibble slowly, or swallow it all
right now
here in this cavern,
like
a prehistoric beast?
Compass
Liana
We leave the cave quickly,
reassuring the frightened couple
that their secret is safe.
The next morning at home
I search my imagination for any gift
that might help them, something I can find
or make, before it’s too late.
Of all the supplies a balsero would need,
una brújula seems the most basic,
an old-fashioned compass, magical like witchery,
yet scientific too,
one of the projects small children learn
by reading old adventure books.
Take a needle from your mother’s sewing kit
and an iron nail from your father’s toolbox,
rub the needle against the nail fifty times,
every stroke in the same direction, never
back and forth, then: metal on metal,
a magnetic charge is created.
If you can’t find a nail, use your own hair,
or even mouse fur.
Pierce a cork or a juicy green leaf
from a sea grape tree, and let the magnetized gadget
twirl in a shallow bowl of water, watch it spin
and settle,
selecting
north.
How long will this fragment of ancient technology
last?
We take it back to the cave.
We don’t ask for any form of payment.
Instead, we help fill two slick black inner tubes
with breath, then tie them together—coiled hope
goodbye
please
float…
Departure
The singing dog
Human desperation smells like a marsh, sour
and fermented, but the dog knows how
to cheer people by keeping them moving
toward a goal, the next scent
a promising one—home, kitchen, nutrition,
the imagination’s ability to conjure a fragrance
of daydreamed
arrival.
Cause and Effect
Liana
Loving each other.
Helping others.
It’s a combination
we never imagined
when all we felt
was physical
attraction.
Separate bellies.
Wondering minds.
Shared hearts.
Black Market
Amado
We need more seeds for our gardens,
a greater variety of edible promises.
There’s only one way.
We’ll have to plunge ourselves
into la bolsa negra,
the shadowy, nomadic network
of illegal marketeers
where secretive people
sell, bargain, and trade
as if profits were not forbidden.
We discover places where we could ask
for stolen government supplies:
kernels of seed corn,
malanga tubers, grapefruit seedlings, and peanuts
that we desperately wish we could swallow
instead of planting.
We have nothing to trade, no antiques, jewelry
or other treasures left over from long ago,
so we’re limited to exchanging things we find
on the beach.
Plastic sandals.
Broken toys.
Empty soda cans.
More and more often
we find discarded possessions
in the cave—boots, photo frames,
a cradle, baseballs, two paintings,
all sorts of objects heavy enough
to make any overcrowded raft
sink.
So we carry these secrets
in an old cloth sack
as if they were smuggled
from overseas.
In black market alleys
it will be easy—but dangerous—to trade them
for garden dreams, our deeply rooted
future.
Gardens of Dreaming
Liana and Amado and the singing dog
Every available
centimeter of soil
in both patios
is soon covered
with a dozen
variations
of green,
the leafiness
as hopeful
as a steamy
afternoon’s
soothing
breeze.
Above the Soil
Liana
Our fingers touch as we work,
lips meet, each quiet kiss
a wishful
forest
of growth.
Our parents decide to pretend
they don’t see.
If we succeed, they’ll have plenty
to eat.
If neighbors or secret policemen notice
that we’ve been haunting the black market,
we’ll bribe them with green leaves
and crispness—cabbage in exchange
for silence, cucumbers to ward off
danger, red peppers to spice
the risk.
Readers and Singers
Amado
from the hidden wizardry of buried earth,
we scheme and wonder, trying to figure out
what to eat in the meantime, and how to help
more and more balseros
obtain supplies they’ll need
for survival
at sea.
Liana’s parents are lectores at a cigar factory,
taking turns reading to workers who sit in rows,
cutting and rolling pungent tobacco leaves.
Each month, laborers vote, choosing books
for the next few weeks of drudgery.
Novels, poetry, plays, whatever they read,
the voices of Liana’s mother and father
entrance me each time we visit and listen,
pretending we’re interested in obtaining jobs,
although really all we’re doing is spying,
hoping to discover a box or bin
that might contain discarded cigars
of an inferior quality, trash we could silently
scoop up and trade on la bolsa negra
without getting caught
and arrested for theft.
Stealing from a government building
is not as easy as it seemed when we
were just daydreaming.
A soldier stands at the exit, humming along
while Liana’s mother bursts into song,
expanding her role from reader to singer,
the lyrics a passionate ballad
of love.
Surrounded by Music
Liana
I grew up hearing Mami sing every day,
so it never occurred to me that someone else
might be surprised by the fountain of music
that flows all around me
like sun
at the end of a storm,
warmth and light interwoven
to form melodies.
We leave the cigar factory without any treasure
to trade or sell, just a new, radiant memory
that did not exist until now, my mother’s voice
rising above silence, her personal protest
against pessimism.
No one who hears
a beautiful love song
can fail to imagine
life beyond hunger.
Harvest
The singing dog
The houses of both humans are now frames
for hidden roots that lift hope toward sky.
There is an aroma of movement
as folded seed-leaves open
a
nd the tips of stems
reach like fingers.
That first red radish makes the girl and boy
celebrate by dancing along with their parents,
but the dog waits for sweet potatoes and melons,
plump foods that help the world smell sunlit.
When he started this matchmaking project
he had no idea that love between two teenagers
would lead to so much shared
human and canine
rejoicing!
A Vision of Independence
Amado and Liana
In the time of our grandparents’ youth,
everyone knew how to care for oxen and horses,
how to plow, plant, cultivate, and harvest,
but my parents’ generation was forced to wait
for beans and rice to reach the ration store,
imported from Vietnam or China.
Our mothers sifted small grains
like rough jewels, picking through them
to discard insects, weed seeds, and pebbles.
It’s a ritual we’ve seen so often, without wondering
why we don’t grow our own arroz y frijoles, but now
everything has changed inside our minds
so that we are intensely aware of our ability
to seize control of hunger,
transforming food
into freedom.
Creativity
Liana
At night
in the cave
we are witnesses
to the hasty construction of rafts
made from sugar carts, bus roofs,
windshields, couch cushions, mattresses.…
Almost any object will float
when fastened to huge inner tubes
from truck tires, as long as the tubes are filled
with air, the sky’s breath
generously shared.
How easy it seems to grow
beyond
limits.
Ignorance
Amado
We carve the stored sunlight
of a stolen pineapple
into brilliant puzzle pieces,
trying to figure out
which gold or green part
to bury in soil.
Is it like a potato that can sprout from
fragments, or are we free to gobble
all these juices, reserving only stiff leaves