Street · Havana
Right Now, Lazaro Beltrán-Voss Is Boxing Round Three and Writing Line Four
In a gym in Centro Habana, a boxer carries a poem through his sparring, and the evening heat slows both.
By Sven Torkelsson · Wednesday, 4 November 2026 · 1 min read
It is ten past six on Calle Escobar, and the ceiling of the gym is sweating more than the boxers.
Lazaro Beltrán-Voss is in round three. His left hand is busy. The rest of him is somewhere near line four.
You can't see it from here, friend. You would have to stand in the corner, where a pencil stub sits in a coffee tin beside his water. Between rounds he takes it, writes six words on the back of a tape wrapper, and goes out again.
Tonight's line four, as far as I can tell, is about a fan that turns and never arrives.
His sparring partner has stopped asking what he is thinking. He just ducks.