“The Last Cuban Militant” is one of two fiery & evocative poems by Juan Parra in our Winter 2017 issue.

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MY FATHER IS THE LAST CUBAN MILITANT.
Raul Castro is shaking his ass to hip hop,
And my father is still wearing his black beret, and green fatigues.
The cafés are jammed with clean-shaven youths
Whose heads are gel addicts, and bodies crave
The sexy stroke of European soccer jerseys.
A blind woman wants to discuss Rembrandt and Van Gogh with him,
And he doesn’t even want to believe that the lips that gently kiss
His swollen feet under the covers is Christ pranking him.

The Americans will bomb us one day; I’ll hide in the jungle.
The Europeans will have orgies on our beaches; I’ll pretend I’m blind.
I have a limited edition Makarov PM and a Mayakovsky poem,
I’ll fight the war being advertised for the last 50 years.

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JUAN PARRA is a Cuban-American poet (born 1985 in Havana, Cuba) who studies creative writing at Florida International University. His work has been featured in the Indiana Review, Basalt, The Lake and 4ink7. In his spare time, he enjoys dipping Guava pastries in American coffee, and works to erase any memory of the dreadful Soviet cartoons played on Cuban TV.