Poem For Castro


with blues
day descends
to the blue sea

just ninety miles
South, they sing mourning
i imagine

a horn muted
by decades of embargo
a simple religion

oh Orisha
and the cold war
the old cars

in the streets
of havanna draped
with the flag

and the sadness
so long ago
minted like a coin

oh Angola
whose troops
fought the good fight

The Rhodes
scholars do not know
their opposite

imagine that
idea raised to tool
a fist of flesh

or simple people
like me, caught
in a hard wind

like a hard job,
a tired and tried
religion stuttered up

i do not know
Castro, who really does
by I would like to think

he is blood, blues,
and the difficult freedom
of a rum

that could not be
sold in America
being drunk everyday


Bro. Yao (Hoke S. Glover III) is a Professor of English at Bowie State University in the Department of English and Modern Languages. His first book Inheritance was published Summer 2016 by Willow Books.