Looking for The Gulf Motel

University of Pittsburgh Press (2012)

Envisioned as a genealogy of the heart, in this third book I explore how my family's emotion legacy has shaped, and continues to shape me. Each of the book's three movements trace my understanding of a particular part of my life from childhood well into adulthood. Born into the milieu of my Cuban exile familia, the first movement dives into early questions of cultural identity and the evolution of this restless sense of displacement that permeates my world. The second movement begins with poems peering back into my family again, but this time examining the blurry lines of gender, the frailty of my father-son relationship, and the intersection of my cultural and sexual identities as a Cuban-American gay man presently living in rural Maine. In the last movement, I'm focused on my mother's life shaped by exile, my father's death, and the passing of a generation of relatives--all providing lessons about my own impermanence in the world and the permanence of loss. In Looking for The Gulf Motel I am looking to capture those elusive moments that come to define us, be it through family, country, or love.

Directions to The Beach of the Dead

University of Arizona Press (2005)

As a Cuban-American, questions of Where do I belong? and What is Home? had always been at the center of my being and my poetry. But after relocating to Hartford in 1999 to teach at Central Connecticut State University, and also traveling for the first time through Europe and South America, those questions became even more complex and bewildering. They began to haunt me, whether sitting in a Roman piazza at dawn or walking through Venice past midnight; staring into the mouth of a volcano in Guatemala or into the eyes of lamb heads at a market in Barcelona; whether driving through the Brazilian countryside or down a causeway in Miami; visiting an aunt in Cuba or an old friend in Vermont; whether listening to a neighbor in Hartford playing Bach, or sitting quietly in my room watching the dust fall. These moments became the poems in this collection. They journal my journey both inward and outward into the world, questioning the idea of home in the foreign and the familiar, in the old and the new, through memories and hopes of what was yet to be.

City of a Hundred Fires

University of Pittsburgh Press (1998)

City of a Hundred Fires takes it title from a literal translation of "Cienfuegos," the city on the southern coast of Cuba where my parents and family are from. I always describe this book as a cultural coming of age "story," tracing the cultural yearnings and negotiation of growing up Cuban American. The collection is divided into two parts, which I like to think of as "BC" (meaning before Cuba) and "AC" (meaning after Cuba). The "BC" poems are centered around my childhood and young adult life in Miami and the growth of my awareness and identity with my Cuban heritage and history. The "AC" poems chronicle my travels to Cuba seeking and (re)claiming my mythic homeland, where I encountered for the first time the landscapes, places, and family that since my birth were merely hand-me-down stories and black-and-white photos.

Around the Web

• Poem on Academy of American Poets "Poem-of-the-Day" app, April 25, 2012
• Poem on Poetry Daily, March 10, 2012
• Poem in The New Republic, December 14, 2011
• E-Chap Book in Floating Wolf Quarterly, September, 2011