Articles tagged "Cuba"
The Christmas Tree
Someone had placed a giant tree in the hotel lobby, a pine made of unrecyclable plastics. We’re in a strange land and Christmas is nearing. We see these things with a particular disdain, a particular…...
There is No Theorem (A Regguetón)
There is no theorem just the combination 10,000 years of going with digressions: I write regguetones, forget the variation. There is no theorem from the mist itself the primates descend in search of phonemes…...
The Other Day After the Rain
I. Once again, the erection. The body’s first signal, heaving me back into reality every time I awake. The Hebrew Kabbalists say that during the night God takes souls on a mystical journey; the privileged…...
The Crane
Aguardiente comes cheap, meat comes dear (somewhat drunk he tap dances over the wet cobblestones, scoring importance from the conjectured case of fractured bone). “Young man, you have to stay thin,…...
Alive or Dead
A metal gate bars his path, and thwarts any hope for the pursued. But then he leaps for it, and easily gains the top. It is his instinct of self-preservation that allows him to accomplish this intricately…...
From the Translator: Elizabeth Harris on Translating Chess in “The Revenge of Capablanca”
In a special piece for Dispatches, Elizabeth Harris, translator of Fabio Stassi's piece The Revenge of Capablanca in this month's issue, talks about the ins and outs of translating Stassi. I’m…...
from “The Revenge of Capablanca”
The match was held in an arena, semicircular in shape, behind the town hall. They set the table and chessboard at the center of the back line. The audience crammed in up front. Most people sat on wood…...
Islamorada
During the twilight hours of one day in January, the professor and his wife arrived at a small motel on the beach at Islamorada, and checked in. After the New Year’s Eve parties, the place had emptied…...
from “Origins”
In Origins, Amin Maalouf recounts the family history of the generation of his paternal grandfather, Botros Maalouf. Maalouf sets out to discover the truth about why Botros, a poet and educator in Lebanon,…...
Counted Threads
She knew she had the threads counted, oriented from top to bottom, with precision slanting. Some mutilated, already frayed, even to the edge stooped and sightless in her rocker my grandmother would say,…...
Threads
Threads that are worn through, idle affairs. The sky is an ungrateful fabric and the clouds make darts in the cotton. That's how I see it that's how. It wrinkles a little more, the forehead, to…...
Mist: In the capital city
Betrayal of the thread that appears and disappears when the disciple is prepared to set out. Today that’s the mist we see burning over the city. Mist of lime, powdery, (on its particular day) it…...
To Offer My Heart
The thundering chords of the Ninth Symphony filled a room where the only tapestries were crowded shelves of books and where music mingled with the sound of waves slapping against the terrace. Marcelo Monteroni's…...
The Man with the Long Mustache
Ever since I can remember, I've loved to watch people who pass by me on the street. I inherited this habit from an aunt who suffered serious injuries in a car accident when I was four years old, and…...
Captain of the Sleepers by Mayra Montero
In chapters that alternate between past and present, this slip of a novel recounts the pain of a child witnessing his parents' infidelities. J.T. Bunker is the "Captain of the Sleepers," a small-time…...
Family Picture in Havana
Mom and I are alone once again the same as it was at the end of the forties. Alone, in a house that's not our own, we tell each other last night's dreams (in hers two old people are always crying;…...
I Don’t Want Anyone Coming around to Save Me
I don't want anyone coming around to save me So, whoever is sending me those nice thoughts, those smug little messages, --take it elsewhere. Cut off the oxygen now. I don't want to suffer the agony…...
Nothing?
Where I used to dwell in my autumn, with my rags and I say dwelled because I felt alive inside there as never before. Where I used to inhabit tremulous, subtle and I was recognized by my sinews and my…...
from Chapter 1, The Autobiography of Fidel Castro
Beneath the shade of a tamarind tree in bloom My father was smoking under the tamarind tree while the women skinned the animals and peeled the cassava. Poor thing. I see him getting a breath of fresh air…...
High Fidelity
They'll be free from the gramophone's pain, its torture from the rub and the needles. Chaste, they'll not know the sin of singing a capella while hungry caught between the farce and the fair.…...
You’ve Never Seen Red Like This Before
I At ten o'clock on a fine sunny morning I went out for a stroll and, as luck would have it, ran into Marina in front of the big department stores in the city center. My friend was wearing a magnificent…...
I Am Spartan
To you, my friend Spartan, Sofia said to Sandra, reminding her of snowbound icy Moscow where she was trained as a StalinistFidelistaSpartan in long lines at thirty below zero with ever-enraged watchmen…...
On Tyranny
The one that's out there in the street, out there in the country, the rough and vehement tyranny, that governs my life as a citizen that one will pass because it punishes my body, but does not have…...
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