Wendy Trevino

#HANDSOFFCUBA

We riot & riot & Cuba never comes, not

Venezuela or Bolivia either & at this point

Who wouldn’t take whatever help they could get

In the middle of a pandemic, a year from an uprising

A year into a new counter-insurgency, watching

The Gulf of Mexico burn, losing power

On the coldest 5 days in 40 years, wading

Into the subway station, feeling like fire is legit

The 5th season, waking up to a layer of ash

On everything outside, the air not safe

To breathe, red skies, thinking you can’t

Even count on seeing the sun in the sky anymore

Wondering when you’ll lose your housing, if

Truly everyone will ever have clean water, in a city

Where empty apartments outnumber people

Who can’t afford housing & what the government’s

Position on the broke people imprisoned

Amounts to is “they will either develop

An immunity or die” & there are still prisoners

The public isn’t allowed to know too much about

In Guantanamo Bay, in the USA-occupied

Part of Cuba & Cuba never comes.

HOW TO DEAL WITH SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS

Someone with purple hair & pronouns I don’t know

Climbs up & shimmies across a pole somewhere in Chile—

Arms & legs wrapped around it—to reach a camera

To destroy a camera surrounded by thousands

Of workers / students / people who use the subway

Everyone claps & the person shimmies back

Along the pole a bit &—legs first then arms—lets go

& it works out / ends up being the best trust fall ever

It’s only when the person is in the arms of the crowd

& they see that they can keep someone from hitting

The ground that everyone cheers & it’s always this way

With revolutionary love there’s always so much of it

You can’t contain & all these people ready to catch

All these people they don’t know can’t contain it

Not wanting to be caught trying to contain it there

Are things more beautiful that start here with this

[IDK]

One thing’s for sure: whether this poem is good

Or not isn’t going to start a movement. Is there

Much to say beyond that? The thing is this can go

On forever. Like infinity pools full of tadpoles

You know are probably gone. Like bees. Like languages

& language speakers. Which is to say it will be over

Before you know it. Who wants a pool

When you could have an ocean & not find traces

Of radioactive waste in a bottle of red wine in California

7 years after a nuclear disaster in Japan. You read all these

Online articles about whales dying. You see

What is either a Blue or Humpback whale

Breach the Pacific Ocean’s surface from the back

Deck of a Taco Bell in Pacifica, CA & think

About how much you’d give

To start over. 

The Pacific Ocean covers more than 30%

Of the Earth. 550,000 miles of internet cable

Can circle the Earth 22 times. For a settler from Iceland

Global warming gives him the best shot at a good life.

He says Greenland is going to be one of the best

Countries in the world. This is his compensation

For not being able to do anything but watch

The glaciers melt. He isn’t here to help

The Greenlanders. He’s here to turn a country

Of hunters into a country of farmers & people working

For the tourist industry. Indigenous people living

In the Darien Gap, between South & Central America

Only recently started growing & selling plantains

After hunting was banned in the National Park.

They compete with Columbian & Panamanian farms.

African migrants pass through the Darien escaping

Dictatorial regimes sponsored by the same colonizing

Countries. French nationals have total control

Of banking in post-colonial Cameroon & logging

Is one of the least regulated industries. Cell phone networks

& internet providers are largely unregulated, too. How many

Phone batteries die in the world’s deserts every year?

How many people?

Make no mistake about it:

In 2019, the caravan, like the black bloc, is a tactic

Not a group. It’s solidarity in motion / resistance / fighting back