Handsome Caudillos

I see the red shirt at the peace rally

and think of my parents

who left everyone and every

thing they knew and loved

save for the coin

forgotten in my brother’s baby jacket.

Men like me in Cuba

failed the test of this symbol’s manhood,

were called “Western perversions”

were imprisoned and made to labor.

Thousands, like these assembled,

were rounded up in the middle of the night

driven to the far countryside to cut sugarcane

for a revolution’s economic quotas.

Tio Alberto’s eyes go blank

when he speaks of the price he paid:

three years of forced hard labor

to work like a dog in the sun

for the privilege of leaving his own country.

I think of the chain of caudillos that promised

one thing and delivered another.