These poems were commissioned by Day Eight within a project funded by DC Mayor Muriel Bowser’s Office of AAPI Affairs, directed by Regie Cabico.
Asian American Writers Workshop Photo circa 1995 on Instagram
By Regie Cabico
Filipino writers holding hands
and jumping in the air:
Gamalinda with a slight scissor
kick and grin, Hagedorn looking
like Santa, chin up, getting up
from a couch, Carbo, left knee up
for a fan kick, Libra cookie face,
mouth open, choir boy, Eileen,
a levitating paper doll, Luis trying
to stomp a fire, his shaggy hair
rock star-esque, left foot
raised like a cobra. Its a portrait
of the nineties, before Marvel’s
Shang Chi and the Ten Bracelets.
Before AOL and QR codes were all
the rage to be enraged about, we held
our workshops in the St. Mark’s Place
basement, under a Gap Clothing
store, in the aftermath of the AIDS
pandemic when the cultural loss
seemed bubonic. We rose with
our words, jumping an ochre fire.
I weep for how innocent we were
writing because a publishing house
was born and how unerasable
we believed we were. The whorl
of covid deaths are now earshots
away. I wake up with horrific images
that make Hieronymus Bosch
look like microscopic
Hello Kitties engaged
in pre-teen illicit acts.
That twink of me,
a Broadway Peter Pan,
seems to possess enough
pixie dust to fuel a Tesla
cyber truck for life. Praise
Roller disco, jump roping with
the girls and stocky retired
Russian ballerinas teaching
tour jetes in drama class.
I had youthful moxie to lift
my literary barkada through
time and smoke. My cheekbones
gaunt and royal, as if flirting
with Death like a badass
descendant of Lapu-Lapu
plucking me with orchestral
silk strings. That me is still me,
inside me like a bluebird
or an echo of grace, perhaps
a shield of sorts yet I fear
what is ahead. The sound
of 1 million covid deaths
only crescendos. My cheeks
are no longer princely,
my gait crooked, my stamina
a twig, my arches deflated.
I have spent the wee devilish
hours of the insomnia
maniacal morning making
a pledge with my angels
and planets that I will celebrate
this last day of November
to honor myself with all its aches
and flaws by honoring
the living: my uber driver,
barista, middle school babies,
doorman. I will locate their halos
and their halos will hold my halo
and they will feel my tug,
my understated twinkle,
my sanctified lift.
Ordering A Chicken Breast
By Regie Cabico
The Peri-Peri cashier
asks me my name
and when I say Regie
she replies, Hadji?
& I immediately
see Johnny Quest’s
friend with the turban
& yoga skills,
disciplined breath
control & snake
charming powers
who saved his white
friend’s hot father
from a knife thrower.
A Calcutta orphan
with street smarts,
sleight of hand
& a gigantic red ruby.
This would have
enraged me a year ago
but fuck it. I’m so fucking
busy & hungry. Fuck it.
The world is covered
in fireworks; tear gas.
I’ll just take it along
with a side of rice
& hot sauce. Shut
my eyes; work
on my own innate
gifts of levitation.
Spring Cut
By Regie Cabico
I am sporting
these wispy
waves of black
antennae
that belong
to an underwater
crustacean or
I look like Beaker
from the Muppets.
This is not how
a sexy guy
is supposed
to get his groove
back after being
freshly vaccinated.
I’m not a figment
of Jim Henson
nor am I trying
to capture
intelligent life
cosmic signals
from Dupont Circle
but I could use
a cosmo or
something sultry.
The Rakuya
drink special
is the Laughing Geisha
& I can’t decide
if that’s racist,
Orientalist
or bad taste
but I order
3 of them
to see if it
gives me
any epiphanies
or causes me to tee-hee
like a world-class concubine
luring cruisey dudes
tucked in their
tight LuluLemons.
It does NOT
give me the tee-hees
but I do pee
a yellow river.
What gives me comfort
is that I can write
the drink tabs
off my taxes if I write
a poem about it.
My Asian hairdresser,
Kenneth, cups the straggles
of hair that has fallen
to the floor
like he’s holding
a cotton bird; tells me
that this is MY HAIR
like I didn’t know that.
This salon is full
of elderly queer men
of every color
who have ALL dyed
their hair blond
including Kenneth
and he still cradles
my hair in his palms
like he found
some kitten I abandoned
in the woods
when I was 9. He raises
my thinning hair
remnants towards me
and then to the sun
and over his gilded
pompadour
offering condolences
as if this were the end
of my Happy Hair
days. What Beckett play
is this? I suffered
a year of pandemonium
& the end of this
particular tunnel looks like
an off-off-Broadway
revival of Happy Days
starring Charlotte Rae
only it’s me buried
to my neck with my hair.
Kenneth holds
my split ends
in his palms like prayer
to the hair strand deities,
their thick manes
& maniacal guffaws
parting the coiffed
marbled skies.
Regie Cabico is a spoken word pioneer having won The Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam and later taking top prizes in three National Poetry Slams. He is an NYU Asian Pacific American Studies Artist In Residence. He is the author of the book, A Rabbit in Search of a Rolex, published in 2023 by Day Eight, and his work appears in over 30 anthologies including Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café, Spoken Word Revolution & The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry.
Featured image in this post is: “Old Friends” by Gauthier Delacroix from Gindaoi, China, licensed under Creative Commons 2.0 via wikimedia commons.
