Since Havana I can see under the hoods of new cars the boat engines the poor
will someday suspend there.
Since Havana I can see, beside the shiny tools, the rows of combs & shovels &
pencils on the dirt.
Since Havana I can see the gulls & the vultures & the seeps of dawn crossing the cordon.
I can see the cordon: an oregami of Benjamins, watched over by focus groups of
newborn Marines.
Since Havana I dream the night traffic stops, the sans-weapons police & the drivers,
discussing tail-lights as they stand together on the shoulder.
Since Havana I dream not a single citizen murdered by a uniform where those watching
can see.
Since Havana the smell of money is inflected by the smell of mangoes.
Since Havana the burned drums sometimes interrupt the advertisements, just before the
signal fades.
Since Havana the charter made by slavers talks over the one banning the latifundio.
Bans & liberties weave their ways like smoke through the castle ruins where I live.
Since Havana ay chica & oh girl answer the news together or is it the olds:
old wheels, old snipers by old wells, old bought stories, old annointed gangsters,
interchangeable.
Since Havana the changeable has expanded to include castles & casinos, real estate
agreements & the river.
Since Havana possibilities of contagion rise from the last public pool across the street.
Since Havana I discuss the weather with bike messengers & cooks at the back & waiters
& the women cleaning the toilets.
Since Havana I can see the former royal marina made a place they could take a vacation
someday.
Since Havana longing for Cadillac convertibles & suitcases of appreciation for the
senators & a woman convertible to a vehicle : not so much.
Since Havana longing for Víctor's laugh describing the box in which he escaped the
mercenaries & how he calls his wife compañera : more.
Since Havana so much plastic, so much feasting on the way to the famine, such rising-
tide revels, so few eyes meeting mine.
Since Havana the neighbors with their pint of garbage call across the straits to my
neighbors, throwing away a palace wing's worth of furniture.
Since Havana the 5 Marianao forks & 10 plates shared among 50 at Leo's birthday true
the pitch of a bite of steak.
Since Havana I sit in corners of exiles' restaurants, waiting for the delivery
of the address of the paid ghost who killed the poet, & of the package of an unpaid
ghost's severed hands.
Since Havana I look under the emperor's edicts
for the rolled scroll transcripts of the future tribunals.
Since Havana the glints of the new day shimmer from the cars in line for the tunnel.
Since Havana I carry something to gather them. Since Havana I waste nothing.
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Suzanne Gardinier is the author of, most recently, Amérika: The Post-Election Malas, Atlas, and Homeland. Other works include Iridium & Selected Poems 1986–2009 (2011), Today: 101 Ghazals (2008), and the long poem The New World (1993), which Lucille Clifton chose for the Associated Writing Program’s Award Series in Poetry. She has also published a collection of essays, A World That Will Hold All The People (1996). Gardinier’s poetry has been included in the anthologies Best American Poetry (1989) and Under 35: The New Generation of American Poets (1989). She is the recipient of the Kenyon Review Award for Excellence in the Essay as well as grants from the Lannan Foundation and the New York Foundation. Gardinier lives in Manhattan and has taught at Sarah Lawrence College since 1994.
"Since Havana" by Suzanne Gardinier
in Poetry