Richard Blanco

Richard Blanco was born in 1968 in Madrid. In his words, he was “made in Cuba, assembled in Spain, and imported to the United States”—his pregnant mother and the rest of his family came to Madrid as Cuban exiles, then left Spain when he was forty-five days old, eventually settling in Miami. Blanco holds a BS in Civil Engineering and an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida International University. He has worked as a furniture designer, graphic designer, and professional engineer, and has taught creative writing and Latino literature at Central Connecticut State University, American University, and Georgetown University. His poems have appeared in such journals as The Nation, Ploughshares, and TriQuarterly, and in such anthologies as The Best American Poetry 2000 and Great American Prose Poems. Blanco’s two books of poems are City of a Hundred Fires (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998) and Directions to the Beach of the Dead (University of Arizona Press, 2005). At present, he lives in Miami.

Elegant Endings

A foggy night, a long silver train, someone’s hand

pressed on the glass, crystallized breaths eclipsing

a face in a window slowly moving past someone left

with smoke clinging around their feet—that ending.

Or the one with the glass shells of runway lights—

cobalt, carmine, and jade dotting a stretch of tarmac

below a plane lifting someone into the hull of night.

Or maybe, the grand good-bye kiss in Paris black

and white at the beginning or end of some war—

another great ending—elegant, noble, final. But

we’re not a movie. I’m still driving without a script

around your house, spying through the windshield

into the tempera light of your bedroom window

insisting that you are there, just as I remember you:

reading Cisneros’ poems under your halogen lamp,

feeling as alone as Cuba, or playing Mercedes Sosa

on the balcony, while you finish a portrait or blend

the right shade of green for a canvas of palm trees.

Maybe you’re drawing the ancient Taíno symbols

you taught me: Guabanex and Ayá which means

I trust in God, I fear no one—but tonight I am afraid

and driving around you again, around the silences

we’ve slammed behind doors or never answered,

and all the apologies brought with roses and notes.

Around and around the scent of wet coral across

your shoulders, the specks of paint on your hands,

the memory of breaths thickening your lean torso.

Around and around your window one more night

to catch that one last glimpse of your silhouette

that will let me drive away, vanish beyond the lights

at the end of your street, for good—that ending.

We’re Not Going to Malta…

because the winds are too strong, our Captain announces, his voice like an oracle coming through the loudspeakers of every lounge and hall, as if the ship itself were speaking. We’re not going to Malta—an enchanting island country fifty miles from Sicily, according to the brochure of the tour we’re not taking. But what if we did go to Malta? What if, as we’re escorted on foot through the walled “Silent City” of Mdina, the walls begin speaking to me; and after we stop a few minutes to admire the impressive architecture, I feel Malta could be the place for me. What if, as we stroll the bastions and admire the panoramic harbor and stunning countryside, I dream of buying a little Maltese farm and raising Maltese horses in the green Maltese hills. What if after we see the cathedral in Mosta saved by a miracle, I believe that Malta itself is a miracle. What if, before I’m transported back to the pier, I am struck with Malta fever and determine I am very Maltese indeed, that I must return to Malta, learn to speak Maltese with an English (or Spanish) accent, work as a Maltese professor of English at the University of Malta and teach a course on The Maltese Falcon. Or what if when we stop at a factory to shop for famous Malteseware, I discover that making Maltese crosses is my true passion. Yes, I’d get a Maltese cat and a Maltese dog, make Maltese friends, drink Malted milk, join the Knights of Malta, and be happy for the rest of my Maltesian life. But we’re not going to Malta. Malta is drifting past us, or we are drifting past it—an amorphous hump of green and brown bobbing in the portholes with the horizon as the ship heave-ho’s over whitecaps, wisping into rainbows for a moment, then dissolving back into the sea.

Perfect City Code

for M.C.

1.0	Streets shall be designed Euro–Style with 300-ft right-of-ways, benches, and flowered traffic circles, to provide a distinct sense of beauty, regardless of cost.
1.1	There shall be a canopy of trees and these shall be your favorite: Giant Royal Palms, 25-ft high, whereas their fronds shall meet in cathedral-like arches with a continuous breeze that shall slip in our sleeves and flutter against our bodies so as to produce angel-like sensations of eternity.
1.2	There shall be bushes, and these shall also be your favorite: Tea Roses @2-ft o.c., to provide enough blooms for casual picking; whereas said blooms shall spy on us from crystal glasses set next to the stove, over coffee-table books, or in front of mirrors.
1.3	Sidewalks shall be crack-proof and 15-ft wide for continuous, side-by-side conversations; they shall be painted either a) Sunflower-Brown, b) Mango Blush, or c) Rosemont Henna; whereas such colors shall evoke, respectively: the color of your eyelashes, of your palms, the shadows on your skin.
1.4	There shall be an average of 1 (one) Parisian-style café per city block, where I shall meet your eyes, dark as espresso, above the rim of your demitasse, and hold your hand like a music box underneath the table; where we shall exercise all those romantic, cliché gestures we were always too smart for.
1.5	There shall also be 1 (one) open-air market per city block to facilitate the purchasing of tulips, mints, baci, and other typical items to lavish on our lives; whereas every night I shall watch you through a glass of brandy as you dice fresh cilantro and dill, and disappear into the scent steaming around you.
1.6	Utility poles and structures that obstruct our view shall not be permitted. At all times we shall have one of the following vistas: birds messaging across the sky, a profile of mountains asleep on their backs, or a needle-point of stars.
1.7	There shall be an Arts District and we shall float through gallery rooms on Saturday afternoons perplexed by the pain or conflict we can’t feel in a line or a splatter of color (works that glorify or romanticize tragedy shall not be allowed).
1.8	There shall also be a Historic District to provide residents with a distinct sense of another time. And we shall live there, in a loft with oak floors and a rose-marble mantle where our photos will gather, and our years together will compete with the age of the brick walls and cobblestones below our vine-threaded balcony.
NOTE:	In said city, there shall be a central square with a water fountain where we shall sit every evening by the pageantry of cherubs, where we shall listen to the trickle of their coral mouths, where I shall trust the unspoken, where you shall never again tell me there’s nothing here for you, nothing to keep you, nothing to change your mind.

How It Begins | How It Ends

somehow, somewhere	the clever dust slips in
wind pares a mountainside	through a cracked window
shaves underneath a cliff’s chin or	underneath the front door
steals a dune from the desert	and comes to rest on a tabletop
somewhere a parched field	across the top edge of a frame
is raped by greedy gusts	over an array of aging photos
or a ripe stone is ground	on blocks of consumed books
and powdered into a soul	a relentless disintegration
everywhere something dead	gingerly settles out of beams
burns alive into a ghost	of morning light, a daily gift
of carbon-gray ash	collecting in the corners of the room
a metamorphosis of the solid	in my eyes, on my hair, over my skin
into an almost invisible earth	I inhale, exhale, move on