Sabor Nuestro
poem - 2016
When the 6:00 sun tugs at your eyelids
Telling you it is time to start the day,
Only one coffee will do.
Not Folgers, not Maxwell,
And certainly not Starbucks.
Un cafecito cubano.
An espresso smaller than a shot glass.
Sugar? Enough to drag your doctor off the golf course.
Milk? No, acere.
We drink it like it is.
And that is the blackest thing white Cubans will admit to loving.
At family gatherings,
Proud offspring sip coffee and trace lineage back to Spain
While Cuban music plays in the background.
Regardless of the musicians’ skin pigments
All of the sounds have a distinct African influence.
Yet most white Cubans have mastered the art of denying:
As he sips a coffee and listens to a son montuno, my uncle tells me,
“Chris, Cuban music is what it is because of Spain.”
And like that,
The skin of every bongo, conga, and timbal
Ruptures like countries at a conquistadors touch.
The call-and-response of singers
Silenced by this sudden inquisition of bloodline.
Even the 2-3 metronome of la clave
Is gutted from the composition.
So what’s left?
Some diddy in harmonic minor,
Some straight and narrow 4-4 rhythm,
Just another European heirloom that nobody wants to claim.
Cubans boast about our music and our women flirting with hips swinging
to a chorus that sings ¡Ave Maria, morena!
Not blanquita.
Not trigueña.
Morena.
Because we’ll share a dance with a black woman
But then tell her she’s not invited to sit at our dinner table,
Or to date our sons,
Or to jeopardize our history,
But really, whose history is at stake?
Dezi Arnaz, AKA Ricky Ricardo
Applauded for banging a makeshift conga drum
And shouting “Babalu-Aye,”
the same Orisha whose worship
kept those African devotees
from ever casting in national television.
Families willingly singing along to Celia’s quimbara, quimbara, cumba quimbamba
But shunning the rumba at the foundation of the track:
The rhythms once deemed barbaric by slaveowners
Now seen as Grammy-worthy,
Only when those same white hands are collecting the royalties.
We’re all dancing with Cuban Pete,
But nobody asks where el chiq-chiquiboom comes from,
el guaguancó,
el sabor nuestro.
What a funny adjective, nuestro, ours.
How it clings fast to any preceding word,
Any idea that was already there,
¡Alaba’o purísmo!
To be told that the rhythm in your bones
Was never yours at all
Must be so
Damn
Tiring.
“More coffee, sobrino?”
My uncle offers a fresh cup
As he sees me retreat from the dance floor,
My eyelids sagging with so much weight.
“Claro, tio. A little milk, please?”
“Milk?!” he shouts. “¡Tómatelo negro!”
Because there’s no denying
That it’s the black
That keeps us moving.
