Everything is symbolic. If they'd picked some middle-aged white guy, well, that would have been a symbol, but it wouldn't have been shocking because that's the expected norm, right? I felt I was a good match: here's an accomplished poet, and he's also gay and Latino.

Everything is symbolic. If they'd picked some middle-aged white guy, well, that would have been a symbol, but it wouldn't have been shocking because that's the expected norm, right? I felt I was a good match: here's an accomplished poet, and he's also gay and Latino.

Your life is a work of art that you will work on the rest of your life.

I was at a stage in my life where I felt sort of comfortable being a dislocated person emotionally, feeling in some ways like a man without any particular country. I had come to a nice space with the imaginary Cuba or the imaginary America that I thought existed.

Entering into writing a poem is an emotional endeavor for me as well as a spiritual and creative one. Having to write those poems for the inauguration, I started asking deeper questions about my cultural identity, and my connection to America.

What was transformative was being at the inauguration, reading my poem, and realizing that the quest for home and identity had always been part of my work, but that I'd been home all along.

I like the labels because I think they tell my story in a very concise way: gay, Latino. I think the responsibility that comes with accepting labels is that now I get a chance to break stereotypes. It gives me the opportunity to tell the unique stories of what those labels mean.