I think the hyphens and those borderlands and those perforated boundaries, are where I’m most at home. At one point in Dreaming in Cuban, I think that Pilar says something like she belongs “ . . . not here or there, but here AND there.” So I am straddling multiple worlds. and I think that’s where a lot of interesting energy happens and gets released, where languages and cultures collide and merge. I think it is also where reality and possibility meet, where a lot of interesting hybridity is going on.
I want the dead to speak through my poems so that we can collectively remember those who built the roads we walk upon. In one poem, I refer to walking through the world, "soaking up the ghosts through the soles of my feet." The ghosts tell us stories, yes, but let's never forget that the ghosts--our ancestors, our compañeros--built those roads.
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