DONDE ESTÁ FIDEL
Where is Fidel?
el
Commandante
el
Caballo
¿Dónde está Fidel?
Fidel esta muerto.
No!
El esta mirando el mar
He is watching the sea
Yes, Fidel is watching the sea…
January 1959
I was thirteen
when the Beards
entered Havana.
I saw it on TV.
Then
in February
on a Friday night
the whole family
gathered around the tube
to watch “history being made.”
Fidel
live - en vivo -
and in person
with his long hair and beard
in a silk bathrobe
smoking a cigar
in a suite in Micky Hilton's hotel
The Revolution was being televised
and it was some kind of slumber party
with a fuck you edge
I fell in love.
The next week
I bought a fatigue cap,
and a rubber cigar
and entered Erie
Pennsylvania
on my bicycle.
My friends were unimpressed.
My parents were not amused.
My uncle said, “All free-thinkers ought to be
shot.”
The Revolution started shooting free-thinkers
And where was Fidel
¿ y Dónde estaba Fidel?
Fidel estaba en las sombras
Si, in the shadows
at the Stadium
watching
Fidel estaba en las sombras.
Fidel…?
April 1959
Fidel in Harlem
Plucking chickens at the Shelburne
The Revolution as BBQ
The Marx Brothers Revolution
Desplumando pollos
Communism with a comic mask
I was taken in again.
Until time
and the Revolution
started falling over themselves
The Missile Crisis
The Special Period
Prisoners of Conscience
Hugs and kisses in Moscow
Poets in jail
Queers in jail
And what about Che?
¿…Che…?
Handsome Che
Holy Che
El Christo Che
confusing love and death
in Africa, and Brazil
Che
gone
and buried
in speeches
and the Revolution
buried
in speeches
Hours and hours of speeches
Anniversaries and speeches
Decades of speeches
An era of speeches
A half-century of speeches
Impossible to love speeches
and impossible to love Fidel
Viejo Fidel.
And, finally, Fidel collapsed,
choking on speeches.
Fidel estrangulaba en discursos.
But Fidel does not die
no –
Fidel nunca morirá
because Fidel is in the shadows
watching the sea.
Yes,
Fidel
esta mirando
el mar.
