Are You Langston Hughes?
____________________________________

she asks me as I walk into the
Colina Hotel. What? The Havana
heat boiling her eyes.    bringing back
a dead man perhaps the only
man she'd loved.

Does she notice the unfinished poems
fading on my cheek or did she see me
leaving the deck of El Moro?

Did she accompany José Antonio on his
fishing trip with Hemingway and discuss me?
What did they say?

Was she at my rumba party watching me
dance with pretty girls while she filled her mouth
with boiled bananas    shrimp    rice?

did Nicolás Guillén show her
my translated poems in a local newspaper?

Doesn't she know that I don't look like
Langston? I'm from Michigan not
Missouri. I'm here to hold a
country in my hands then let it go.

From Approaching the Center by Myronn Hardy

New Issues Poetry & Prose, Western Michigan University, Dept. of English,
1903 W. Michigan Ave., Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5331
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