Tag: Asian American Poetry

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: REGIE CABICO

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine

IT’S NOT SO MUCH HIS KISS I RECALL AS HIS VOICE
By Regie Cabico

A shy pebble rippling water. Each phrase
a school of startled ginger fish shimmering
through the telephone line. I’d like to invite
you to my place & immediately I became
a frightened puppy in a tropical rain forest.
Only to my surprise, I was in Brooklyn
reading Lorca in his living room, calmly
sipping tea. He played me Joni Mitchell
crooning the lines he loved & even tried
to sing the high notes. His falsetto cracking
midair as we both laughed. That’s when he
rested a photo album on his lap & pulled
a picture of himself, a young boy swimming
in a Buenos Aires blue reflecting pool. I wanted
to lick the nape of his neck instead said, You’ll
have to teach me how to swim. I’m afraid
of water. That’s when he placed his lips
to mine, our most perfect palates open as we
pulled away to catch our breath.. You have
to be relaxed otherwise you’ll drown. I kiss
him again feeling ribs beneath sweatshirt,
our hearts racing the way a diver freefalls
plunging in a sea of pearls


Today’s poem appears here today with permission from the poet.


Regie Cabico is one of the country’s leading innovators and pioneers of poetry and spoken word having won 3 top prizes in the National Poetry Slams as well as the Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam. Bust Magazine ranked him in the 100 Men We Love & The Kenyon Review called him the Lady Gaga of Poetry. He received 3 NY Innovative Theater Award nominations and won a 2006 Best Performance Art Production award for his work on Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind. Other theater credits include the Hip Hop Theater Festival, The Humana Theater Festival & Dixon Place. He has appeared on two seasons of HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and NPR’s Snap Judgement. His work is published in over 40 anthologies including Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café, Spoken Word Revolution & The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. He has taught at Urban Word NYC, Poets House, Kundiman, Split This Rock and has been on the faculty of Banff Arts Center’s Spoken Word Program. Mr. Cabico received the Writers for Writers Award for his work with at-risk youth from Poets and Writers. He is former NYU Artist in Residence for Asian Pacific American Studies. He performs throughout the UK and North America & resides in Washington, DC.


Editor’s Note: I had the pleasure of seeing Regie Cabico perform recently at NYC’s louderARTS weekly reading series. He gave one of the most engaging, entertaining, and raw performances I’ve seen—poetry or otherwise. Mr. Cabico rolls up his sleeves and delves into the theater of the real, exploring queer themes and other matters of the human condition, as thoughtful and honest in his humor and wit as with his tenderness. A true performance artist in his own right, Regie Cabico’s words are as riveting on the page as they are displayed before a riveted crowd, his peacock feathers on full display. After his performance, the drowning of today’s poem stayed with me for days. When asked if he had any books for sale he replied, “Nothing for sale online but my body.” The Lady Gaga of poetry indeed, and then some.

For a real treat, watch Regie Cabico perform today’s poem live.


Want to see more by Regie Cabico?
Inspired Word Performance on Youtube
Three poems at EOAGH: A Journal of the Arts
watch Regie Cabico perform “Capturing Fire” live

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: LI-YOUNG LEE

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine

By Li-Young Lee:


THE GIFT

To pull the metal splinter from my palm
my father recited a story in a low voice.
I watched his lovely face and not the blade.
Before the story ended, he’d removed
the iron sliver I thought I’d die from.

I can’t remember the tale,
but hear his voice still, a well
of dark water, a prayer.
And I recall his hands,
two measures of tenderness
he laid against my face,
the flames of discipline
he raised above my head.

Had you entered that afternoon
you would have thought you saw a man
planting something in a boy’s palm,
a silver tear, a tiny flame.
Had you followed that boy
you would have arrived here,
where I bend over my wife’s right hand.

Look how I shave her thumbnail down
so carefully she feels no pain.
Watch as I lift the splinter out.
I was seven when my father
took my hand like this,
and I did not hold that shard
between my fingers and think,
Metal that will bury me,
christen it Little Assassin,
Ore Going Deep for My Heart.
And I did not lift up my wound and cry,
Death visited here!
I did what a child does
when he’s given something to keep.
I kissed my father.


FROM BLOSSOMS

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.


Today’s poems are from the book Rose (BOA Editions Ltd., 1986), and appear here today with permission from the poet.


Li-Young Lee was born in 1957 in Jakarta, Indonesia, of Chinese parents. In 1959, his father, after spending a year as a political prisoner in President Sukarno’s jails, fled Indonesia with his family. Between 1959 and 1964 they traveled in Hong Kong, Macau, and Japan, until arriving in America.

Mr. Lee studied at the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Arizona, and the State University of New York, College at Brockport. He has taught at various universities, including Northwestern University and the University of Iowa. He is the author of four books of poetry and one memoir and has been the recipient of numerous honors and awards.

Editor’s Note: At his recent reading with Peggy Shumaker and Amber Flora Thomas (held in New York’s Poets House and sponsored by Red Hen Press), I had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hear Li-Young Lee read. Not only to experience this performance, but to shake the poet’s hand and tell him how much his words have meant to me, how his poems above all others have been a vessel for me in my grief.

Between my father’s passing and seeing Mr. Lee speak I read Rose cover to cover, perpetually weeping. When tears would not come to me, though I felt the need to express them, it was this book that opened me up and enabled release. I cannot read Lee’s simple, sincere, and elegant poetic contemplations of the loss of his father without becoming one with him in his grief, and in so doing becoming one with my own, as I must.

Lee’s words and thoughts paint themselves into the mind’s eye like the most finely-crafted calligraphy. Simple beauty that defies the painstaking art required to make it. “O, to take what we love inside, / to carry within us an orchard.” I can scarcely conceive of a poet who better exemplifies what poetry ought to be.

Want to see more by Li-Young Lee?
Buy Rose from Boa Editions Ltd.
Poets.org
Poetry Foundation

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: W. TODD KANEKO

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine

NORTHWEST POEM
by W. Todd Kaneko

You will find no herons perched
in this poem. No salmonberries or pine
cones on sodden paths through cedar.
But here is an old woman who slices
her calendar into weeks lost and weeks
to come—those piles sifting together
while she waits for the leaves to turn
into blankets full of moths and ravens.

Here is a girl who dwells in dollhouses
deep in this poem, porcelain boys hiding
fingers from whales’ teeth and butterfly
knives. There are no miles of shoreline
lapping at ends of days like wolves,
no fishladders swarming with sockeye,
only a skeleton where the ocean once was.

Extinction begins as absence, ends gaping
like a surgery, a hole in my chest
marking that mythology we call home.
Mount Rainier does not drift phantomlike
in this poem, but here is that old woman,
crooked under the weight of a century.
She waves off that flock of dark birds
thronging overhead, threatening to pluck
eyes from sockets, tongues from mouths,
until all we can discern is the tide washing
over bare feet, the sound of wings.


(“Northwest poem” previously appeared in Lantern Review and is reprinted here today with permission from the poet.)

W. Todd Kaneko lives and writes in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His stories and poems can be seen in Puerto Del Sol, Crab Creek Review, Fairy Tale Review, Portland Review, Southeast Review, Blackbird and elsewhere. He has received fellowships from Kundiman and the Kenyon Review Writer’s Workshop. He teaches at Grand Valley State University.

Editor’s Note: In response to today’s poem I say, “Thank God for stunning moments in poetry!” If not God, then The Universe, Creative Energy, The Muse. Here’s to W. Todd Kaneko’s muse, at the very least. She is a creature to be awed and honored.

Want to read more by and about W. Todd Kaneko?
Blackbird
Superstition Review
Word Riot

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: OLIVER DE LA PAZ

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine

INSOMNIA AS TRANSFIGURATION
by Oliver de la Paz

Because the night is a scattering of sounds—blunt
branches hurtling to the ground, a nest stir, a sigh
from someone beside me. Because I am awake
and know that I am not on fire. I am fine. It’s August.

The scar on my neck, clarity—two curtains sewn.
A little door locked from the inside.

Nothing wants anything tonight. There are only stars
and the usual animals. Only the fallen apple’s wine-red crush.

Rabbits hurtle through the dark. Little missiles.
Little fur blossoms hiding from owls. Nothing wants
to be in this galaxy anymore. Everything wants the afterlife.

Dear afterlife, my body is lopped off. My hands
are in the carport. My legs, in the river. My head, of course,
in the tree awaiting sunrise. It dreams it is the owl,
a dark-winged habit. Then, a rabbit’s dash
to the apple, shining like nebulae. Then the owl
scissoring the air. The heart pumps its box of inks.

The river’s auscultations keep pace
with my lungs. Blame the ear for its attention. Blame
the body for not wanting to let go, but once a thing moves
it can’t help it. There is only instinct, that living “yes.”


(“Insomnia as Transfiguration” was originally published in diode, and is reprinted here today with permission from the poet.)


Oliver de la Paz is the author of three collections of poetry, Names Above Houses, Furious Lullaby (SIU Press 2001, 2007), and Requiem for the Orchard (U. of Akron Press 2010), winner of the Akron Prize for poetry chosen by Martìn Espada. He co-chairs the advisory board of Kundiman, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of Asian American Poetry. A recipient of a NYFA Fellowship Award and a GAP Grant from Artist Trust, his work has appeared in journals like The Southern Review Virginia Quarterly Review, North American Review, Tin House, Chattahoochee Review, and in anthologies such as Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation. He teaches at Western Washington University.

Editor’s Note: “Because I am awake / and know that I am not on fire. I am fine. It’s August.” How could you not be blown away by a moment like that? Today’s poem is spotted with such moments, appearing between flashes of abstract images and ideas. “Nothing wants anything tonight… Nothing wants / to be in this galaxy anymore.” The idea of nothing being an entity of sorts, something capable of desire, is one such abstract idea, ever successful in its ability to get the reader’s mind to think outside the box.

Want to read more by and about Oliver de la Paz?
From the Fishouse
Guernica Mag
Linebreak
The Rumpus
Memali