Kyle Carrero Lopez
—
Greater-and Lesser-known Cuban Folklores
__________
Just east of Havana, Hemingway the discoverer
staked claim to Finca Vigía: eggshell, fifteen acre
Spanish-colonial stuffed with libros and dead
animales, prime for ogling his city below
Imagine he and Martha, wife number three,
then he and number four, Mary, humping
with all those deer and antelope heads
poker faced tall on pale walls, wide eyes fixed out
the door to the back veranda,
party streamer bougainvillea vines
clinging to the façade
__________
When slaves debarked in Cuba
the Spanish deduced some of their men
were warriors of spirit
who might harness the Orichá in battle
against Christ,
slaughtered them all first
and spared the women in tactical mercy,
deeming them weak,
expecting subservience, suspecting nothing
__________
He preferred to go by Papa
or papá, over Ernest
Finca Vigía means Lookout Farm
Papa was always looking out at something
Once, Ava Gardner, friend and live-action
Lady Brett, swam solo in his square pool
with nothing on, siren starlet enjoying herself
while Papa spied from second-floor windows
He’s said to have told his staff
never to empty the water afterwards
Today it remains, dust-dry, in faded blue paint
__________
Suspecting nothing, they let the women be
as the faith lay tucked in their hair
Years later: enter Aurora Lamar
Ceremonial name Obá Tolá,
“La China del Ten Cent,” Madam of the Barrio Ataré
Santería— Ifá in Christian drag—grew legs
from within houses like hers
where payment plans earned hundreds
the key initiation supplies
so they could enshrine their homes
then induct more themselves
The faith, woman-borne
crawled across the island
till Orichá and Christs cohabitated all over,
predator and prey, cockroach and iguana,
one used to moving in secret
and craftier for it
__________
Hemingway said he never wrote drunk
but if he had: perhaps, on occasion,
drunk Ernie slunk
up the steps to the ivory watchtower
next to the main house mid-sundown
after hours of upright writing,
maybe even whipping it out to water his lawn,
the city of Havana,
with that genius piss
as bamboos, palms, and banyans below—
hosts of all the squirming
live things—
sway patiently, groaning
Kyle Carrero Lopez is a Black poet of Cuban-American heritage. He lives in Brooklyn, reads poetry submissions for Homology Lit, and is a founding member of LEGACY: A Black Queer Production Collective. His newest poems are published or forthcoming in The Nation, Frontier Poetry, POETRY, Hobart and Great River Review. He received an MFA in Poetry from NYU, where he was a Goldwater Fellow.
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