Virgil Suárez

In Los Angeles I grew up watching The Three Stooges,
The Little Rascals, Speed Racer, and the Godzilla movies,
...

grew larger next to the brick wall
by our house in Havana,
this loose-leafed tree
that gave neither shade
...

What is found in mote of dust a float in shaft
of light coming through an abandoned house's
window? A cracked dirty floor, a woman
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I am dreaming again
of breasts. Mountainous,
slick with morning dew breasts.
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owner of the kiosk in Arroyo Naranjo.
She tended her shop & made her living
& introduced me to sweets: mercocha,
boniatillo, dulce de coco, guarapo.
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Here where the snake coils itself
into the ground by the warm water
of the Rio Grande, the earth splits
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When my grandmother left the house
to live with my aunts, my grandfather,
who spent so much time in the sugar
cane fields, returned daily to the emptiness
...

The empty mocking bird nests
built into the Y crooks of branches
is enough circumstantial evidence.
...

Makeshift
is a word
the sea loves
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The oxen cart driven to the sugar cane fields,
the look on the driver's faces, years of hard
work had hardened their skin, their hands,
...

at night, long after the midnight movies
which I stayed up to see, what little nudity
they dared show, I also wrote my poems,
my stories, in teen-age blood, confusion
...

We stood across on the other side of the street
in Havana the day they came to take Lolo away.
Two men brought him out of the house. Wild-eyed,
...

The villagers speak of settlements on the hillsides
where fruit trees sprout golden, red-orange flowers,
birds the color of regret perch on palm fronds, preen
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In the stillness of your heartbeat,
A mocking bird perches on the lip
Of the Koi pond, confuses a wisp
Of hyacinth for the cupped hands
...

Sometimes you surrender to your destiny,
a scratched-torn cardboard suitcase, black
as your shadow, places where travel seems
uncertain, these dead-hour porches, parasols
...