to protect us against perilous flames.
Radiation. Contamination. Toxic breath.
Each air-raid drill is sheer terror,
but some of the city kids giggle.
They don’t believe that death
is real.
They’ve never touched a bullet,
or seen a vulture, or made music
by shaking
the jawbone
of a mule.
When I hide under my frail school desk,
my heart grows as rough and brittle
as the slab of wood
that fails to protect me
from reality’s
gloom.
WAITING TO DIE
Nearly two weeks of horror.
Anger. Dread. Visions of doom.
From October 22 to 28,
no one speaks of anything
but mushroom clouds.
Atomic bombs.
Cuba.
Evil.
Supermarket shelves are empty.
Food and water are hoarded.
Gas masks are stored in bomb shelters—
expensive underground chambers
that only rich people can afford.
The rest of us will be left aboveground,
where we’ll have to inhale
poisoned air.
WAITING TO UNDERSTAND
At home, silence.
At school, chatter.
During visits to Dad’s relatives,
long, complicated arguments
about Communism.
Capitalism.
War.
Peace.
Survival.
I escape to Aunt Marcella’s
quiet den, where I read magazines
and adventure books,
instead of listening
to grown-up
confusion.
WAITING TO BE RESCUED
US Navy warships surround the island.
Talks between leaders are the only hope.
Secret talks.
Mysterious talks.
All I know is whatever I learn
by listening as TV newsmen
struggle to guess, trying to predict
the horrifying
future.
Powerful messages must be
passing back and forth
between the American president
and the Soviet premier.
Kennedy.
Khrushchev.
The whole world’s safety depends
on the words of two men
who are enemies.
WONDERING
I don’t understand Communism
or capitalism, or presidents
or premiers, or nuclear
radiation.
I do know that aire means both
spirit and air.
Breath.
Inhalations.
Dangerous.
Precious.
How will I decide whether to breathe
toxic sky?
And what about an afterlife?
Is there anything beyond this slow torment
of waiting to die?
IMAGINING
My sister tells me the plots
of horror movies, while our parents
watch more and more news.
I don’t know which is worse,
The Blob and 13 Ghosts,
or NBC and CBS.
I can hardly stand either one.
All I want to do is read
The Iliad and The Odyssey,
Aesop’s Fables, The Tempest,
A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Ancient tales with endings
that have meanings
instead of doubts.
SURVIVAL
Diplomacy succeeds. Words win.
Death loses.
At the end of two weeks of secret talks
by world leaders,
the rest of the earth’s people can finally
breathe.
Nations were not destroyed.
Cities were not devastated.
No one died.
It wasn’t a real war.
Newsmen spoke of the Cold War,
an almost-war of words,
not a battle of bombs
and blood.
It’s safe to inhale now.
No radiation.
No poison.
Except for the toxins
left behind in teachers’ minds
when they talk
about Cuba.
THREE SIDES TO EVERY STORY
Two world powers in the Cold War
of enchantment in fairy tales.
One is helpful, the other dangerous.
The first we call magic, the other
an evil spell.
But what about Cuba?
If the United States is all good,
and Soviet Russia is all bad,
then what is the island,
and how did it feel to be trapped,
like Abuelita and my great-grandma,
Tío Pepe, Tío Darío, the cousins?
Trapped between Russian missiles
and North American warships.
Surrounded.
No borders to cross.
No way to escape.
All around, in every direction,
just blue sea and blue air,
all the beauty and danger
of natural water
and powerful sky.
And what about afterward?
Will Abuelita be expected
to think of us
as her enemy?
LIFE GOES ON
Days and nights are once again
strangely normal.
School. Daydreams. Books.
Wall-poems. Family.
Then, my first junior high dance.
Boys are shy.
Girls are disappointed.
Later, at my first junior high party,
in a house where the parents
aren’t home, hardly anyone is timid.
Almost everyone drinks, smokes, laughs,
and makes out.
Except me.
I am still only
eleven.
FIRST
First kiss.
On a pier.
At the beach.
He’s sixteen.
I’m eleven.
I could vow
that I love him
or claim
that I hate him.
All I know
is a first kiss
should not be
like this.
So I run.
Away.
Alone.
Confused.
LAST
After I race away from that scary
first kiss, I have no hope for love,
or even like.
No more childhood
or in-between dreams.
Nothing to think of
as my future.
No real self.
Just books.
The only goal in junior high seems to be
finding a boyfriend, but all I have now
are disappearing friends—older girls
who brag about weed, meth, heroin,
sex, and other adventures
that have nothing
to do with me.
Soon, most of my new friends
are pregnant and addicted.
They drop out of school,
leave their parents’ houses,
apply for welfare.
When I see them at the mall,
pushing babies in strollers,
they look old and tired.
REBELLION
I argue with my parents
about nothing important.
I cut up travel magazines,
and cover the poem-free spaces
on all my bedroom walls
w
ith bright pictures
of sunny places.
I feel old enough to travel
on my own,
ready to flee
and leave home.
So I begin to save
all my babysitting money
for a journey—alone—
to India or Fiji or Brazil,
any place tropical
and distant.
INVISIBLE
Why don’t we ever talk about Cuba
anymore?
No one at home or school
seems to remember the Missile Crisis
and the Cold War.
The island has vanished from maps
in travel magazines, from posters
at travel agencies, from books
in history class.
No one wants to think about
those two weeks of fear
that almost killed us.
Does my invisible twin still exist
over there, the brave island girl
who knew how to dance
and gallop?
SMALL JOURNEYS
We never really travel
as a family anymore,
not beyond US borders.
All our adventures are short
and simple.
Local mountains. Trickling streams.
Together, we sit beside the flow
of gentle water, listening.
Dad wants to go back to Europe,
to study a new art technique,
but Mom is stateless now.
Without any diplomatic relations
between the United States and Cuba,
there is no embassy or consulate.
No place to renew her expired
passport.
CLOSE TO HOME
News is all about the United States now.
Mississippi. Memphis. Martin Luther King Jr.
When an Alabama church is bombed
by racist extremists, four girls are killed,
civil rights workers are murdered,
people all over the country
march to demand equal rights.
My family marches too.
My own off-key voice rises, singing
“We Shall Overcome,” and other songs too,
about being like a tree standing by water,
refusing to move.
Soon, I think of my life as bigger and bolder
than junior high.
But when President Kennedy
is assassinated, newsmen are quick
to blame Cuba.
GHOSTLY
Mom stays home
from the marches.
What if she’s still being watched
by the FBI?
Could they deport her?
She could change her country.
Take a naturalization test.
Answer all the questions.
Swear allegiance to the United States.
Become a citizen.
Vote.
Face facts,
accept the loss of her right to travel
back and forth to the land
of her birth.
But she won’t.
Everything else about her island
seems so distant
that she clings
to her useless
passport—that last
papery link.
I’ve heard stateless people
referred to as ghosts.
No identification.
No country.
They can’t cross borders.
But most of them are refugees,
who have no chance to choose
a new country.
Is Mom the only person on earth
who remains
ghostly
by choice?
COMMUNICATION
Cuba starts to seem real again.
Abuelita writes letters in code,
inventing poetic metaphors,
to prevent the island’s censors
from understanding her words.
When she says that Tío Darío
is working hard in the garden,
Mom somehow knows that it means
he’s been arrested, and sent
to a prison or a forced labor camp.
We don’t know why—did he give food
to those counterrevolutionaries
fighting in the mountains?
Did they drink fresh milk
and chew sweet sugarcane
from emerald-green fields?
Other news is just as shocking.
Singing vendors are outlawed.
Selling anything is illegal.
No one is allowed to make a profit.
Religions will soon be outlawed too.
What will happen to the eternal flame
that Abuelita ignited when Mad
survived polio
so long ago?
WILDERNESS
When another summer comes,
we escape from the confusion
of city life and world news
and personal loss
by camping.
We hike beside waterfalls,
climb a rounded mountain,
and rent gentle horses
to ride
on wild trails.
It’s the closest we’ve come
in a long time
to feeling
like a normal
family.
REVIVED
At home, Mom starts a hospital
for abandoned and neglected
house plants, pulling them
out of our neighbors’
plastic trash cans.
She nurses the roots back to health
with water, fertilizer,
and hope.
Her efforts are rewarded
with spectacular blossoms.
Watching her, I learn
how to help lost things
spring
back to life.
Two Wings
1965
A SWIRL OF CHANGES
Some lost things can be brought back to life,
but others have to be transformed.
Mad and I listen to the Beatles,
while Dad insists on opera,
and Mom still chooses romantic
boleros, and lively son montuno,
the music of guajiros who ride horses
and drive oxcarts.
Certain ideas begin to flow backward
from young to old.
Mad and I teach Mom to stop
ironing sheets, start wearing jeans,
and give up speaking so politely
that she can’t explain the birds
and bees
of teenage life.
When she tries to teach us about dating,
they’re rules she learned
when she was a girl:
Never call boys.
Wait to be asked.
When an invitation
finally arrives,
don’t act too eager.
Why do I always feel like I’m waiting
for my real life
to start?
TRAVEL PLANS
With new words like “hippie”
suddenly replacing “beatnik”
and “bohemian,” Dad reclaims
the wanderlust
of his youth.
England, France, Italy,
and a whole month in Spain.
He’s borrowed enough money
for six months in Europe, where he
will study a new art technique
in Paris, and then, in the summer,
we’ll join him
to roam like nomads.
But only if Mom can obtain
special permission by visiting
all sorts of government agencies.
Her plans have to be precise.
Dates and ports of entry
for ea
ch country
must be officially approved
in advance.
It’s the same
for departures.
No nation wants to risk
a visit from a stateless
Cuban ghost.
REALITY
Mom is nervous. Anxious. Fearful.
She speaks to her rescued plants,
urging brown leaves
to turn green.
Our new travel plans are so real,
while memories of Cuba seem
imaginary.
But the island is not a fantasy.
Poetic letters from Abuelita reveal pain.
The farm is gone, confiscated.
Cattle, horses, and cousins
have vanished.
Food is rationed.
Cubans are hungry.
But at school, we don’t study
our own nation’s trade embargo
against the island.
Teachers no longer mention
the travel ban or the Missile Crisis
or statelessness
or refugees
or the future.
All we learn about is ancient Rome
and George Washington,
as if only the distant past
can ever be
understood.
MY OWN VIEW OF HISTORY
Cold War.
My icy
dread.
Cold War.
My frozen
hopes.
But how can an almost-war,
or anything else, remain frozen for long,
on such a hot tropical island
where even the coolest
sea breeze
feels
steamy?
SOARING
Flying over Ireland,
the rolling green hills
make me think of Cuba.
In London, I’m held spellbound
by the gracefully arched neck
of a white marble horse,
carved
and galloping.
In France, each cathedral offers
art lessons from Dad, but along with
the spectacular light and dramatic
architecture, each brilliant
stained glass window
contains a story.
Desert. Savior. Angels.
Shepherds. Pilgrims. Saints.
Beggars. Suffering.
Hope.
NOMADIC
Gargoyles.
Castles with dungeons.
Winding roads that lead us
from village