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.

model minority as dessert
by reg ledesma

at the reception, a waiter emerges from the kitchen, a plate balancing on his right palm with a gleaming silver cloche lying on top. he is well-practiced, and he glides with ease across the dining hall, the tawny lights from the chandelier lending his pupils an eerie luminescence. intrigued, the white diners eye the cloche, curious about their next meal. the waiter rests the plate on the marble table. his brown fingers grip the top of the cloche, unveiling desert for ravenous hyenas. resting on the plate is a chocolate cake and two asian-american miniature figurines standing on top, replicas: one korean woman, one filipino man. they stand on top of the cake, a chocolate buttercream. the diners salivate, peering at the figurines, and the waiter departs swiftly. before consuming, they marvel and inspect. “look at the detail!” one gasps. “that one looks like my friend grace from college.” another diner points out the tortoise-shell glasses and slicked black hair of the filipino man. “how could anyone make this? and edible at that huh?” one touches the male replica, taking off his varsity harvard blazer. the figurine, half-naked, stares at the diner, through his glossy eyes, unmoving. the diner continues to disrobe the figurine, and the pants come off, exposing the replica. the other diners giggle at his brazenness, amused. without hesitation, he bites into the figurine, his yellow incisors dismembering its lower torso. an audible gulp. then, another bite before the figure disappears into the depths of his stomach. “delicious,” he said, “absolutely remarkable.”

migration euphemisms
by reg ledesma

in the seventh grade, i announced to my friends
that i was returning to the philippines.

i already knew how to fashion euphemisms. i was a poet, an expert on
language. “returning”–implied agency. “being deported to”

was too violent. the words were trapped under the roof of my mouth,
its violence compressed between borders.

each day was a dress rehearsal. i would slide on my
costume of model minority: quiet, smart, meek asian.

“my father is an engineer, my mother works as an accountant”.
i excelled at my assigned role, the lies i (we, they) told myself.

my costume clung to my skin, like a
cannibalistic adhesive.

one evening, i bought pokemon cards, deluxe edition
& my mother, trudging home & exhausted from the salon

cried and cried. “how much was that?” she bellowed.
& i ignored her, thought it was appropriate payment

for my role. & my father pulled us out of the filipino church when
we lost status, muttering about nosy parishioners, who would meddle in our business.

meddle in our faith. interrupt our prayers. & what kind of litany can i pray to God for
a reunion? what saint’s intercession can give us the power to return?

my mother believed america was an opportunity for her children–
a false idol she prayed to at night to keep her warm.

& she faithfully made trips to the western union like monthly homecomings.
remittances wired back as substitutes for our bodies.

& balikbayan boxes of our hand-me-downs our
cousins would slide on months later & this was how we touched across borders.

& calling cards to keep contact. & questions of when when when are you
coming home, please please please come home–supplications floating into the ether.
confined between borders. no definitive answer.

growing pains
by reg ledesma

in the cramped kitchen, one wall is cracked
the corner jutting out, streaks of smudged
black ink lining it.
two children stand, expectantly.

their father holds a pen, orders his son to
stand on the corner upright. the boy puffs his chest
trying to gain an extra inch. the father holds
the pen on top of his son’s head, etches his measurement

on the wall. he sighs, dissatisfied.
splayed out on the countertop, wrinkled, is a
growth chart. the father studies it as if it is a
crystal ball, a forecast of the future.

but really, he is just glaring at history’s ugly face.
decades prior in the philippines, brown bodies, lined up
searching for jobs. american colonizers
turned them away for being too “short”.

in the heat of the san joaquin valley, filipino farmworkers
stooped over, their spines bent, little brown brothers
excavating the white man’s weeds. brown hands picking,
picking, picking. white farm owners towering over them.

american journalists, on trips to manila,
peered at the brown bodies their eyes
like ravenous crows, hungry with voyeurism.
filipinos, they wrote were “very low of stature”, while americans were “giants”.

here, in the kitchen, the father
barks at his son to drink more milk.
he is trying to save his son from a genetic destiny
but history is inescapable.

brooklyn
by reg ledesma

i started the summer, with bated breath,
my naive excitement evaporated in the heat of the city, as i emerged up the subway stairs.

the blaring car horns, like calloused hands slapping me in the face
the permanent stench of piss pushed me off balance.

the sun, relentless, burned my face in my carelessness and laughed.
here i was: capitulating to a city i once romanticized in my dreams.

faces on the street were unmarked and foreign.
here, there was nothing familiar; and slowly, the city consumed me whole.

what was worse, i thought? the silence of my thoughts back home or
the violence of this new city?

Reg Ledesma is a queer first generation Filipino writer based in DC. They are a graduate of Duke University’s Master of Public Policy program and a Jack Kent Cooke scholar. Their writing explores topics such as Asian diaspora, colonization, historical revisionism in the Philippines, and queerness. In their free time, they co-organize the DC Liwanag Filipino-American Literature Festival.

Featured image in this post is: “Dumbo, Brooklyn, New York City” by Linda Fletcher, 2022, creative commons via wikimedia

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.

This poem is one in a series commissioned by Day Eight within a project funded by DC Mayor Muriel Bowser’s Office of AAPI Affairs, directed by Regie Cabico.

Being and Belonging: Walking While Asian American

By Sunu P. Chandy

It was an extrovert’s dream
Saturday. After spending the morning
sitting on the newly built porch at a friend’s home
and the three-year-old’s refusal to share
his stuffies, not his diny, sharky,
fishy, or puppy, but insistence that I acknowledge
each of them and him playing with them,
and after we gave him a new happy birthday box
of flesh-colored crayons, imagine it,
24 skin tones now, and after we took almost nothing
from their yard sale except one lovely wire
basket, mostly to mark the memory
of that gorgeous September perfect
weather day, after all of that,
we stopped by a DC street fair.

And as we got closer to this street fair
there were cars honking, police
directing traffic, and overflowing crowds
on the sidewalk. My teen daughter and I got out
to walk and meet our friends
since we only had a short window
of time to say hello before my friend’s cocktail
dress required 40th birthday party that evening.

As we were rushing along,
there was an older, possibly intoxicated
man, with two women friends, in front of us
on the sidewalk. We soon observed, this was the kind
of seemingly drunk man who commented
out loud, on everything. And when we passed by,
he began to say, Oh they’re walking so fast, so fast,
so fast, I am going to follow them. And then he began
to trace us closely. And then he began to say:
What’s your name, what’s your name,
what’s your name, what’s your name. Hey miss,
what’s your name? And before I could decide
whether or how to engage
in the midst of our rushing, this turned
into: Oh okay, so you don’t speak
English. Oh okay, you don’t speak
English. I guess you don’t speak
English. And if that wasn’t enough,
he then he went into a full “fake Chinese
mocking” “word-sounds.” Those very sounds
I had not heard since my own Midwest
American childhood. But this time
my daughter was with me. Her face
told me she was startled,
and possibly scared. And I didn’t
turn around and say: Stop it
right there. I didn’t stop and say, No one
harasses me, or my Asian American
child. I just said to her, quietly
and plainly, You know what,
let’s keep on. Let’s just keep on
walking.

And later in the car, when we debriefed,
my daughter said, I wanted to cuss
him out. And I said, I get that. And
she said, That was so super racist.
And I said, Yes. She also said, He was probably
“on something.” And I said, You’re probably right.
I continued, It’s hard to know
how best to engage in these moments,
and my goal is always to defuse,
instead of escalate. And when I asked if she knew
what escalate means, she said, To throw gas
on the fire? And this was the best definition
I had ever heard.

And then I told her about the long ago time
the white attorney boys in 1998 in NYC
told me, they could in fact keep sexually harassing
the white attorney girl in the office,
and talk about her body, every single time
she came into the library where I too was sitting,
because, as they said: I don’t know where you come from
but in this country we have freedom
of speech. Upon hearing that legal theory,
my 13-year-old, with zero law school training,
suggested they go back to school
because, as she said it: That’s actually not
what freedom means.

Sunu P. Chandy is based in DC as a social justice activist, poet and civil rights attorney, and her family roots are in Kerala, India. Her poetry collection, My Dear Comrades, published by Regal House, features cover art by Ragni Agarwal. Sunu is a Senior Advisor with the non-profit organization, Democracy Forward, and a board member of the Transgender Law Center.

Featured image in this post: “Granite sidewalk – Manhattan, New York City, USA”, 2020, Daderot, creative commons.

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.
 

Her Tao of DC
By Pacyinz Lyfoung

In another life, she used to be a nail that stuck out,
someone who spoke words of justice in a sea of silence.

In this city, her spine tingled,
dazzled by flying crows, king pigeons and fireflies,

and here,
she has spent years defying gravity and exploring her spine.

Still, like a mountain, just a line shooting up
from the firmness of her ground to reach for the sky.

Quiet, like a log floating on air,
from the tailbone to the top of the head.

Open, like a puppy,
from the blooming of the chest to the vaulting of the ribcage,

which remains a stumbling block,
being a warrior no longer sure how to hold her sword.

In a sequence, she balances like a boat,
before finding the geometry of a crab;

moving on to the shape of a turtle
flipping on its shell to circle around the cosmos;

squishing back into the warmth of its cavern,
seeking ease under the weight of the world.

To progress to bouncing back
in an arc holding everything together,

they tell her she should find Archer,
so, it’s time to read the Tao of Pooh:

an attempt to find East through the West
and vice-versa, in a bear crawl towards honey.

At first, she buckles at this look to Asia
through the western gaze,

but Western-born, there is still truth in this useful lens
to clearly see her Asian roots

across diaspora
and the western clouds of her childhood.

Holding on to books and bows,
word by word, inch by inch,

every DC morning, on yellow foam,
she flexes the Tao of her Asian American dreams.

Honeywine Global Alchemy
By Pacyinz Lyfoung

Tracking time
I pursue the perfection of public speaking

Tracing common history
I delve into the vernacular of honeywine

Not fermented with fruit from the earth
but with nectar from flowers collected by bees

Minding the ums and the ahs,
trimming the unnecessary pauses

Thousands of years-old Chinese jars boast
the oldest residues of water mixed with honey

Then the word sprinkles in myths of gods
everywhere in the world

Pre-Hindu Vedic records note honeywine
in voices singing before the Age of Books

Euphoria of a gift of honeywine/tej from the Queen of Sheba
to King Solomon intersects Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religions

In Viking lore, honeywine/mead rewards fallen warriors entering
Valhalla with this ambrosia of the gods

In Viking lore, poets are born from drinking the Mead of Poetry
made by mixing the blood of the wisest of gods with honeywine

Medieval bards found inspiration in mead flasks
free-versing in lords’ halls and common folks’ taverns

Today, I am a DC Valkyrie meddling in global lore
more like a mythical Kinnary spilling silver needle tea
from the rolling hills of Xiengkhouang

Traveling our shared cosmopolitan heritage
among the crowd of international workers and locals

Training our tongues with accents from everywhere
to master the intricacies of effective communications

Sharing the journeys of honeywine
in Asian American polyglot poet fashion

Fermenting words and places,
for an alchemical reaction, becoming an invocation:

DC as an international, national, and local hub–
all those dimensions which feel like home.
 

Speaking dreams and volcanoes *
By Pacyinz Lyfoung

Biking block by block
She meditates with the wind
Brushing her ears and whispering
The dreams of bricks, whether they
Be crushed by clever landlords
Or still rising from ruins
Repossessed by People Power
Every corner has a story
Which is now her story
Movement attorney
Moving through the city’s chess board
Will this be some investor’s cold calculations
Or will this be some community’s aspirations?

Here used to be a Nigerian’s entrepreneur daily akara oyinbo crushed by white yuppy wealth
Here used to be an Ethiopian couple’s adera vacated by the same white yuppy progress
Here used to be a tug of war between a Bangladeshi building owner and a Caribbean small shop
Here is a still ongoing battle royale/jung/zhandhou between a Pakistani owner and a Chinese corner store

But here is also a cooperative home growing among the weeds
But here is also a former addicts’ rental become their co-owned home

Every block brews volcanic fires
of underground bubbly dreams and bright beginnings,
as she firewalks with them,
unafraid of flames,
descended from phoenixes,
Survivor of the CIA Secret War in Laos,
the last stand of her People for their beloved country
she will lend her sword to every struggle
for people to not lose their home
for grassroot knights to keep sparring for their grails of brick
resisting and building block by block

*Title inspired by a line from Pablo Neruda
 

To the Altars of my DC Home
By Pacyinz Lyfoung

A few fluffs of white chicken feathers
stuck on a gold and red wooden platform
with a few drops of burgundy dried blood,
below the silver sticks of burnt incense:
here dwells a Hmong man worshipping his ancestors,
all the forefathers whose spirits still protect
the family line.

Eyes closed in internal enlightenment or
bereft of life in savior’s ultimate sacrifice or
demure in virgin’s immaculate conception,
all the faces of gentle godliness:
here dwells some believer following
Siddhartha Gautama, the son of God, or
his Lady Mother.

Blood is the sacred river sanctifying
Home,
the tie to our ancestors,
heroes, prophets, and
goddesses.

The obsidian wall
sliced by a giant knife opening an underground
mass grave like a mirror missing the names of my forefathers,
winks back with my eyes from beyond
like a raven wing under the yellow sun and the blue sky,
as I run to it like a child runs back home whenever lost
and bring it flowers once a year when we remember those who sacrificed.

Always crossing the river in-between,
below the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier,
under the sweet shade of an evergreen Atlas cedar,
under a bronze plaque atop a granite stone
the size of an elephant print,
there lies the forever home of the Hmong freedom fighters
who call for flowers from their children:

here dwells my blood tie to DC.
Pacyinz Lyfoung is a French-born and raised, Minnesota-grown, Hmong/Asian American woman poet, attorney and activist. She emerged as a poet among the Asian American Renaissance and the Hmong Literary Movement in MN. She has been published in the Gulf Review, the Mid-Atlantic Review, and others, and in anthologies including, Bamboo Among the Oaks: Contemporary Writing by Hmong Americans; To Sing Along The Way: MN Women Poets from Pre-Colonial Days to the Present; The Forgotten River: An Anacostia Swim Club member anthology; and, They Rise like a Wave: An Anthology of Asian American Women Poets.

Featured image in this post is: “Cumuls clouds viewed from above, Spain” by Alvesgaspar, 2014; license creative commons via wikimedia commons