A Tourist’s Complaint

I was a tourist in Cuba

griping about the menu

in the all-you-can-eat buffet

we were staying at an all-inclusive resort

in hill country feeling my Canadian entitlement

when the beer

ran scarce and foaming like backwash

in the bottom of a plastic glass

and in the guava-fragrant

cafeteria sorrowfully considering my appetite

for the fish shipwrecked

on the platter

like the staves of a boat

washed up on the shore

and the knuckle bones

of a pork roast

bending the plate to the floor

with mostly the grease staining the threads of the meat

from the last oleogustus of a half-starved sow

and though I did not know this at the time

it was what Fidel called the special period

when after the collapse of communism

in the rubble of East Berlin

Cuba was orphaned by the failing Soviet

and the malnourished citizens

were thinning away to scraps at the elbow

and the children went hungry to bed

and of the mostly barefoot dancers

some wore slippers worn through in the sole

their bodies like shadows that vanish in light

meanwhile we ordered up lobster

we complained of the heartburn from mackerel when the red snapper were all eaten up

while the cupboards of Cuba

went lonesome for one cup of rice dwindled down to a grain

and a father I know

rode his broken bicycle forty miles in the rain

chasing the false rumour of food

Provoked by Places Award Winner TOPS 2022