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18 Poem Between Havana and Varadero Cousin Tino’s never gone sixty, now he’s pushing ninety in a rented Kia, first time driving automatic—a honk, a grin as he dusts a Soviet Lada, ’71, same as his other car, puttering down this road that shouldn’t feel as right as it does: windows down, radio up blaring real salsa, my cousin JL playing conga on the dash, a cig from his lips. We click beers—Viva Cuba—though I want to believe I’d hate my life here— like Tino damning la revolución de mierda under his breath as we pass the guards at a control point staring him down— but I can’t, even as I read past the haunt of El Che on billboards spelling out my fate here: Socialismo o Muerte. I don’t want to forget I’m from someplace else, but I do, unlike my brother listening to AC/DC on his iPod, Facebooking his post-divorce girlfriend, unmoved by the mountains in the distance where he was born, not me. Why should I be the one to feel for this island, loathe the German tourists at the rest stop 19 who drink my daiquiris, dance mi salsa as if they’re stomping out a campfire? Terrible dancers, but what chutzpah, just like JL ordering Tino to pull over or he’ll piss out the window. He stops by a cove and JL searches for a bush. I climb to a rocky ledge over the sea. Beautiful, verdad? he yells back to me, but the last thing I need is to love this crocodile-shaped island that was my beginning with no end, I don’t want to taste the waves shattering drops on my lips nor hear Cuba speak through the wind gusting up words in my ear: . . . aquí eres el otro . . . . . . here you are the other . . . . . . eres viento y ola y tierra . . . . . . you are wind and wave and earth . . . JL zips up—Vámonos—he pronounces, we get back in the Kia, back on the road heading somewhere west of Varadero— east of Havana—chased by a poem: . . . aquí eres el que nunca fuistes . . . . . here you are who you never were . . . . . . eres viento y ola y tierra . . . . . . you are wind and wave and earth . . . ...

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