The distorted man’s bulging bug eyes
seem to be admiring the camera,
instead of his beautiful novia.
But she’s gazing at him.
Why?
Nothing
EDVER
During the minute we waste staring
at Mom’s boyfriend,
NEW PAPILIO
has already been shared
by scientists on three continents.
So I quickly click delete.
Gone.
Extinct.
No more fake species
of beautiful rare butterfly.
My sister’s message hurtles back in time
to that moment a few minutes ago,
before our tricky words existed.
But not really, because they’ve already
been shared, and probably printed,
spreading across the world
like polluted air.
Forget it, I tell Luza,
this was a waste,
she’s not coming, Mom doesn’t care,
we’re on our own,
there’s no way to distract
a brilliant person from her own stupidity
once she gets her imagination filled up
with nonsense.
Mom and I must be the reason
people invented
the phrase
one-track mind.
Each of us can be narrow enough
to follow a railway, trail, or road
straight into a crash
without noticing
danger.
Everything
LUZA
As soon as the words I typed are gone,
my brother and I return to the way we felt
about each other right after meeting.
Neither enemies nor friends, just two lives
that can never be truly close, because of the sea
in between.
We’re like insects, bats, and birds,
all just as thoroughly winged,
even though they evolved separately.
Edver could have given my trick a chance,
but he’s selfish, so what else can I send
to tempt Mamá?
Photos of sculptures—but no, I don’t have
a camera, and anyway, I can imagine
that my mother might be horrified if she saw
all my muddy self-portraits decorated with trash,
a throwaway girl, her creation,
not mine.
Blame
EDVER
Luza storms outdoors to play fútbol
with her friends, the soccer ball hurtling
away from her forehead
like a bullet.
No te preocupes,
Yavi’s great-grandma says,
creaking up out of her rocking chair
to follow me outdoors,
where she drapes
a strand of beads
around my neck.
The beads are seeds.
She names them:
Fortuna. Luck.
Flor de amor. Flower of love.
Mal de ojo. Evil eye.
I thank her and touch each bead,
noticing that luck is big and glossy,
while the flower of love is small and light
with bracts that open like petals,
but evil eye is dark and shiny,
a night creature
creeping.
I don’t want to keep
this eerie necklace,
but if I throw seeds away,
won’t they sprout and grow
into blessings
or curses,
rooted?
Separate
LUZA
I let my brother find his own way home
while I play fútbol until I’m exhausted,
all the rage burned away and charred
into ashes of sadness.
Walking home alone feels right,
until the chuckle of a tocororo bird
helps me laugh at myself, his array
of red, white, blue, and green feathers
so cheerful that it’s easy to forget
how impossible
it is for his species
to survive in captivity.
If you try to cage un tocororo
all you’ll end up with is a memory
of lost wings.
Later
EDVER
Stuck in the same house as my angry sister,
beetles, glittering as brightly as jewels.
Some are striped purple and green, others
pale yellow and deep red, but my favorite
is a species that is almost always silver,
until an occasional gold one is found.
Maybe gold is a mutation,
or just an oddity
created by climate change.
Imagine what a terrific
evolutionary advantage
that one gold beetle would have,
camouflaged in a thicket
of yellow flowering shrubs,
protected from predators
by pretending to be
invisible.
Mom always talks about biodiversity,
but I hardly ever listen carefully enough
to think about what she really means.
Now, my mind scrambles all over
the possibilities, picturing variety,
flora and fauna, humans, too,
so many variations,
a world of amazement
that shrinks each time a forest
vanishes, each tree such a wealth
of species that live on branches,
inside wood, down in leaf litter,
scurrying through shade,
gobbling fruit, swallowing seeds,
growing. . . .
Abuelo’s room starts to feel like a museum.
There are stuffed birds here too, not just
pinned beetles.
There’s an ivory-billed woodpecker
that has only been extinct in Cuba
for thirty years.
Mom was one of the last people to see it alive,
pecking at the bark of a palm tree above her head,
when she was little.
This bird might turn out to be a Lazarus species!
Someone—maybe me—could rediscover it,
and become famous as a wildlife conservation
superhero!
But there’s a brilliant Cuban macaw, too,
extinct since the 1850s, and Abuelo says
I’m more likely to discover a living dragon
than a bird that hungry people ate
because it was big, and women plucked
because bright feathers looked pretty
when used as fluttering decorations
for fancy hats, a bird that lost its habitat
when forests were chopped down
to plant sugarcane.
That’s all it takes to wipe out a species.
Just a few ordinary people making a string
of greedy
decisions.
Silenced
LUZA
The extinct Cuban macaw was mostly
a red bird, with a sun-hued splash of gold
on the back of its neck, green-blue wings,
and a purple fringe on the rump. . . .
Yes, that intelligent species, Ara tricolor,
just might have been the most beautiful bird,
and now it’s gone.
Forever.
Abuelo’s tears look like stars
in a moonless sky, the brightness
an unimaginable number of light-years
away.
On Patrol
EDVER
I’ll never go back to that museum room.
From now on, I want to be out in the forest
with Dad, riding little Platero
beside tall Rocinante.
Even on a small pony, I feel
big, grande,
strong,
a wildlife
conservation
superhero
in training!
When I go back to Miami in September,
I’ll start studying hard, learning everything
I can manage, just to make sure I get into college
and become a specialist. One of the ologies
would probably be best: ornithology for birds,
entomology for insects, herpetology—reptiles,
mammalogy—mammals, ichthyology—fish . . .
there’s no end to the variety of animals
I could rescue from poachers, hunters,
and other creepy losers.
In the meantime, if any of those sorts
of selfish people show up here
in my family’s forest, I’ll make sure
I’m ready and waiting, just like Dad
with his fake gun, only I’ll think up new ways
to scare bad guys away—I’ll turn it into
a clever game, roar like a dragon,
spit out a waterfall
of flames!
It’s never too early to start working
toward a goal, so I throw myself into the effort
to learn from Dad, following him around
with lots of questions, writing down
the answers, and studying everything
he says, just to prove
my enthusiasm.
Dad tells me he thinks I’ll be heroic
someday.
Waiting, Waiting, Waiting
LUZA
Papi seems to prefer Edver,
but I know it’s just because they’ve never
had a chance to work together
like a team.
With the words NEW PAPILIO deleted,
I have no way to lure Mamá here,
so there’s nothing to do but resolver,
solve problems,
inventar, invent.
Otherwise, she and I will never
know mother-daughter tears, laughter,
or any more ordinary form
of teamwork.
So where do I start?
What should I make?
I remember how hard Abuelo worked
to teach me English, even though he only
knew what he’d learned in college
a long time ago, and I was so bored
that I barely paid attention.
Now, his patience is exactly
the kind of perseverance I need,
but in the meantime, all we do is watch
our blurry TV, all the telenovelas that bring
waves of joy and tears.
Then, during an interruption for news,
we see a Miami poet reading miraculous verses
as the US Embassy finally reopens
right across from our seawall!
More than half a century of anger
between enemy countries
has suddenly been replaced
by the flow of rhythmic words.
Will Mamá and I ever
have our own chance
to talk to each other
and make peace?
Thrills
EDVER
Patrolling with Dad, and the renewal
of diplomatic relations
are both exciting,
and so is a baby jutía
that I find in the forest,
my chance to rescue one
little individual
if not a whole species.
Suddenly, my entire life is a rush of duties—
feeding, brushing, cleaning, until after
a few hardworking weeks,
the funny creature is able
to sit on my lap
and eat from a spoon,
looking as silly
as a cross between a beaver
and a cartoon.
So I name him Snoopy.
If Abuelo can have a wiener dog
called Jutía, then I can name my real jutía
after a beagle!
He’s as mischievous as a monkey,
climbing up to open cupboards
and empty bags of precious rationed rice,
sacks of coffee, and tins of homegrown spices—
saffron, nutmeg, coriander, so that the kitchen
smells like a mixture of pumpkin pie
and curry.
Snoopy helps me laugh out loud
at least fifty times each day, but he also
makes me work so hard that I feel
like a full-time zookeeper,
superskilled
and useful!
When I hoe weeds in the garden,
Snoopy rides on my shoulder,
and every time I ride down to the village,
he’s right there with me, like a little brother.
Is this the way Mom felt when she took me away?
Responsible, constantly ready to help?
Was Luza left behind only because she
was one year older, able to run around
instead of clinging?
That would make sense.
I could understand anyone’s
lack of confidence
in a small
boat
on a huge
ocean.
I’m glad I don’t remember
the size
of those
waves. . . .
My Shrinking World
LUZA
I used to think life was enormous,
but now
it seems tiny and dull.
My heart is like a frozen zoo,
the last cells of a vanishing species
preserved with ice, just in case someday
there’s a way to bring lost treasures
back to life.
Feeling vicious, I show my brother
a photo album with pictures of Abuela,
the mother our mamá lost only last year,
without ever coming back to visit
even once
to say good-bye.
Edver could have met her, if our two countries
and our divided family had been normal.
Red, blue, green, yellow, purple,
all the shimmering colors
of an extinct Cuban macaw,
that’s how complicated
my thoughts seem now,
inside this private freezer,
my secret mind.
Communication
EDVER
When two snail mail letters from Mom
arrive with colorful Fijian stamps, I feel wide,
then narrow, and in the end, I go back
to feeling mixed up.
Nothing but questions.
How are you and Abuelo,
your sister, Yoel, the forest?
Not a single answer.
No explanations,
Just an ordinary hurricane
of Mom-powered
confusion.
No return address, no way to respond.
If I could send my complicated mother
a simple letter right now,
what would I say?
Maybe the first thing I should be asking is
if that injured bicyclist is completely okay,
but all I actually want to know is why
can’t Mom and I both go back and forth
between two homes,
our city world
and this forest?
What’s the use though—my mother never
really answers my questions about Cuba.
She still calls Dad Yoel, as if she wants me
to think of him as a stranger, not family,
just a name,
not a relationship.
When I
was little,
the first ten thousand times
I asked if I had a father,
she just shrugged.
Then, when I was big enough to know better,
she admitted, se quedó, he stayed.
It’s a phrase every Cuban in Miami
understands.
Now, all she ever says is how complicated
everything is, and how someday
I’ll understand, when I’m older
and wiser.
But she doesn’t seem all that wise either.
First she abandons Luza,
then she leaves me
with babysitters while she travels,
and now she can’t even offer
a sensible explanation
of anything
that matters.
So when Snoopy starts chewing up
that airmail envelope from Fiji, I let him
just go ahead and destroy it completely.
Later, while Luza silently reads her letter,
I pretend I don’t know what she’s doing.
That way, we can both act like we’re
still alone in our shared confusion.
Trying to understand grown-ups
is one of life’s greatest scientific
puzzles.
First Contact
LUZA
Descriptions.
The people, houses, flora, fauna,
and beaches of Fiji.
Endemics.
All the rare Lazarus species of islands.
Isolation.
Separation.
Lo siento, I’m sorry.
Perdóname, forgive me.
Por favor, please.
I feel like a shoreline absorbing
the first view of an approaching
tsunami.
With no return address, I can’t answer,
but if I could, maybe I’d just send
an empty envelope.
It wouldn’t be the first time
I sought papery vengeance.
Over the years, I’ve imagined
mailing nothingness
to Miami
over
and over
like a migration
of resentments.
Now, when my brother asks, I say that Papi
stayed here to guard our forest, keeping
evil poachers away.
But Edver assures me that our mother left
to do the same thing, except that she tries
to protect the whole world’s wildlife, not just
one small jungle refuge.
Separate, our parents are like two planets
orbiting the sun, their paths never meeting.
Together, they could have been
a heroic team.
This Brother-Sister Mess