Poetry Pop- Up Regie Cabico

Oblation

by Regie Cabico

Your poems revolve around

                                                my brain like sushi rolls

                        of genius

            on a conveyor belt…

I sit in the darkest corner

                        where my eyes are pitchers

                                                full of sangria…

& I am too sullen to sleep

                        or blink. I offer you my arms

                                                that are so heavy

            they would break a lover…

Instead I give you my fists

                                                unfolding like construction

                        paper cupids …

I have pried my ribs

                                    in the hope

            of finding you an Adam…

The cuckoo clock

                                    in my chest

            collapses & I release the bird…

Here is my body,

                                    a mausoleum

                        of Russian dolls…

            for all the failed romances

                        I’ve unscrewed…

Accept these gifts: the bird

                        that looks like 2 mustaches

            kissing, the arms of a clock

that never meet, my fists

                        light as snowflakes  & the river

                                                of sangria that quietly

            moves & waves us on…

Reprinted from Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Vol. 17:2, Spring 2016, with permission of the author.

Regie Cabico is a spoken word pioneer, having won the Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam in 1993 and taking top prizes in the 1993, 1994 and 1997 National Poetry Slams. Cabico is co-editor of the anthologies Flicker and Spark: A Contemporary Queer Anthology of Spoken Word and Poetry (Lowbrow Press, 2013) and Poetry Nation: The North American Anthology of Fusion Poetry (Vehicule Press, 1998), and his work appears in the anthologies Short Fuse, Poetry Slam, The Spoken Word Revolution, and Full Moon on K Street: Poems About Washington, DC. He is co-director of the Capturing Fire National Queer Poetry Slam And Summit. Cabico was a featured poet at the 2016 Split This Rock Poetry Festival.