Coca-Cola and Coco Frío

On his first visit to Puerto Rico,

island of family folklore,

the fat boy wandered

from table to table

with his mouth open.

At every table, some great-aunt

would steer him with cool spotted hands

to a glass of Coca-Cola.

One even sang to him, in all the English

she could remember, a Coca-Cola jingle

from the forties. He drank obediently, though

he was bored with this potion, familiar

from soda fountains in Brooklyn.

 

Then, at a roadside stand off the beach, the fat boy

opened his mouth to coco frío, a coconut

chilled, then scalped by a machete

so that a straw could inhale the clear milk.

The boy tilted the green shell overhead

and drooled coconut milk down his chin;

suddenly, Puerto Rico was not Coca-Cola

or Brooklyn, and neither was he.

 

For years afterward, the boy marveled at an island

where the people drank Coca-Cola

and sang jingles from World War II

in a language they did not speak,

while so many coconuts in the trees

sagged heavy with milk, swollen

and unsuckled.