Roast pork and ham. Slice
of Swiss. Dill pickle and
yellow mustard. But it’s
the bread that makes it all
work. Falling somewhere
between French and Italian,
it’s a subtly larded baguette,
honed in the culinary forge
of Cuban, Spanish, and Sicilian
immigrants. Toasted crust,
soft and warm on the inside.
The young bakers in La Segunda
religiously set a moist palm frond
along the top of each three-foot
length of dough before popping
it into a brick oven. (Don’t forget
to remove the crisped frond when
it’s time to eat.) The Cuban sandwich
was the common cigar-factory worker’s
lunch-pail fare and post-shift snack.
But it’s also fuel for Ybor City poets
like me. When home, I sip café
con leche and count the countless
crumbs on the white tablecloth
at La Tropicana restaurant on 7 th.
When I’m not in Ybor and chowing
at a lesser joint in, say, Las Vegas,
I study my constellation of specks,
hoping these morsels comprise a trail
that tearfully leads to mi abuela,
improvising a map of freedom with
fragments of food and memory,
divining scraps of frying pan-pressed comfort,
this first and last meal of my birthplace.