Contents
Part I: Indigo
Lament for the Boy Rafter
Mirage
Mother Under Water
When Leaving the Country of Your Birth
Blue Cuban
The Art of Raft Making
Balsero I Rafter
Moon Decima
Caribbean Catechism
After Kcho’s La Columna Infinita
Hot House
Arabasques
Liminality
Vibrational Reciprocity
Part II: The Painting Bunting
Caribbean Dream Lexicon
Caribe
Havana Blue
Blue Line
A History of Rain
La Sangre Llama
After Lorca’s “The Ballad of the Sleepwalker”
Jaibas
Days of Ornithology
My Mother’s Mouth Fills with Water
Monsoon
Miami Beach
Night
Cuban Dream
Paul Klee Visits Santiago de Cuba
Dusk in the Tropics, a Parable of Light and Shadow
Part III: Exegesispart Exegesis
Repeating Island
Alma Profundis
Poem on the Anniversary of Elián González’s Return to Cuba
Recitative after G. de Chirico’s Les Adieux Eternels
Gesture
The Mortician’s Guayabera
The Pentagonies-Las pentagonias de Reinaldo Arenas
Ghazal of the Broken
Wilfredo Lam at the Pantheon of the Paint Gods
Mariposas Negras: My Mother’s Return to Cuba
Orthography
Lotus Flower Balm, or Self Revelation with Praying Mantis Perched on My Finger
Claritas
Fantomas, Master of Disguise
Exegesis
Part IV: Hypergraphiapart Hypergraphia
Bad Sons Anonymous
My Father, the Arsonist
The Beautiful Light
Bloodlines
El Rio (Mississippi)
Detroit Low-Down Canto
Erasure
Let Us Refresh (Alvarez Guedes’s Ascension into Comedy Heaven)
Poem on the 10th Anniversary of Janet Jackson’s Nipple
Harry Dean Stanton Is Dying
The Lion Head Belt Buckle
Alba Written at Bennington College
Hypergraphia
Acknowledgments