This is Plahm’s most exuberant cultural-catalog poem since “The Word Is— / Dance,” and it operates by a similar engine: accumulation as celebration, the list as love letter. The opening—”CooooooooBaaaaaaaaa!”—is not a word but a yell, the vowels stretched to match the speaker’s excitement, the typography performing the sound of a man shouting across water toward an island he can see but cannot quite reach. The elongated vowels are the poem’s signature gesture, returning at the midpoint and the close like a chorus.

The adverb catalog that follows is the poem’s structural foundation: “Logically, / Geographically, / Culturally, / Linguistically, / Legally, / Economically, / Strategically, / Wonderfully, / Should be—” Eight formal adverbs building a rational case, and then “Wonderfully” breaks the pattern—the only adverb that is an emotion rather than a category. The dash after “Should be—” withholds the predicate, creating a suspense that the poem won’t resolve until its midpoint: should be the fifty-first state.

The cultural inventory is the poem’s heart, and Plahm handles it with the enthusiasm of a man working through a playlist and a menu simultaneously. The dances arrive first (Rumba, Mambo, Conga, Cha-cha-cha), then the music mutates into food: “Jazz turned into cuisine, / salsa, (dance and taste).” The parenthetical is the poem’s cleverest compression—salsa is both a rhythm and a condiment, both heard and tasted, and the parenthetical insists on holding both meanings at once. The “I Love Lucy” reference introduces Desi Arnaz without naming him, trusting the audience to hear “Babalú” and see the conga drum; the Dizzy Gillespie passage adds bebop to the cultural stew; Gloria Estefan arrives as “señorita” and “enchantment”; Celia Cruz is crowned “Queen of Salsa” and declared “the secret sauce / for engagement”—a phrase that works in the culinary, the romantic, and the military register simultaneously.

The fifty-first-state declaration is the poem’s political center, delivered not as an argument but as an inevitability: “It should have been / the Chosen, / for it’s fire and sweet desire.” The image of Cuba as a star “at the tip / of our flag” is both cartographic (Cuba sits at the tip of the Florida peninsula) and symbolic (the newest star, the brightest, the one that completes the constellation). The number “51” standing alone on its own line has the visual weight of a jersey number, a highway marker, a statement of intent.

The closing returns to the opening yell—”CooooooooBaaaaaaaaa!”—and adds the Spanish exclamation “¡Magnífico!” before dissolving into the poem’s most lyrical image: “swirling, swirling, swirling / in a magical mist / off the coast.” Cuba as mirage, as music, as mist—visible, audible, tantalizingly close, not yet arrived. The triple “swirling” is the poem’s last dance move, the hips still turning as the music fades.

A poem that succeeds through sheer infectious energy—the verbal equivalent of a conga line that picks up dancers as it moves through the room. The elongated “CooooooooBaaaaaaaaa!” is a bold typographic choice that works because the poem commits to the volume: this is not a whispered appreciation but a shout across the Florida Straits, and the poem never lowers its voice. The adverb catalog is a surprisingly effective structural device: by building the case for Cuba through formal categories (logically, geographically, economically) before breaking into the cultural inventory, the poem argues that statehood is both rationally justified and culturally irresistible—the head and the hips agree. The salsa parenthetical “(dance and taste)” is the poem’s most elegant compression, holding the dual meaning in two words and three punctuation marks. The cultural name-drops are well-chosen and well-sequenced: Lucy/Desi for mid-century America, Dizzy for jazz, Gloria for pop, Celia for the crown—each representing a different era and a different art form, collectively arguing that Cuba’s cultural exports have been weaving through American life for decades. The “secret sauce for engagement” triple-entendre is a moment of real wit. The fifty-first-state argument is provocative and playful simultaneously—the poem doesn’t labor the politics but treats statehood as an aesthetic inevitability, a matter of rhythm rather than policy. The closing mist image is the poem’s most poetic moment and its most honest: Cuba remains just off the coast, visible, swirling, magnificent, and not quite here. Where the poem could deepen is in acknowledging the island’s complexity—the cultural celebration, while genuine and joyful, doesn’t touch the exile experience, the political reality, or the human cost that makes Cuba’s relationship with America as painful as it is musical. But the poem knows its register: this is a celebration, not a history lesson, and the dancing is the point. The triple “swirling” at the close keeps the hips moving after the last note, which is exactly what a good salsa song does. A poem that makes you want to dance toward the fifty-first star.