I first visited Puerto Rico when I was about 10 years old, right
around the same time.
And like a lot of young kids, I experienced the world
at that time primarily, overwhelmingly,
through my senses.
Since I was a fat kid, I experienced the world
overwhelmingly through my mouth.
So I was going through Puerto Rico,
eating and drinking my way across the island.
And along the way I learned some surprising lessons.
Lessons, not only about the cuisine,
but about the politics of US domination
of Puerto Rico, which is a colony of the United States.
You might call this my cultural imperialism on vacation poem.
It's called "Coca-Cola and Coco Frio."
"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 '40s.
He drank obediently, though he was bored with this potion,
familiar from candy stores in Brooklyn.
Then, at a roadside stand off the beach,
the fat boy opened his mouth to coco frio--
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."