Regie Cabico   SPRING POEM THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A SESTINA Living with another poet can drive you crazy like the waiting list to use the computer or the way he sneaks up behind you to check what’s on the screen. You’re always tempted to steal each other’s metaphors like the loose change hidden in his crumpled trousers. Take the dove on our fire escape whom we’ve named Rita & her babies Paz, Bishop, Ai & Neruda. He wants Rita for an upcoming elegy & I want them all for a spring sestina. You understand how difficult it is developing allegories with little money but we still drive in each other a hard bargain.   IN BED WITH JAMES TATE A paperclip of light falls on the first poem titled, “Where Babies Come From” I place the book aside because Nightline is on starring Harold Bloom who looks like a plate of cold asparagus. The other guest is Emily Dickinson whose breasts are poached apples. Her nipples stemless cherries, galloping in wild pentameters. She’s belting, “I like to see her lick my miles” accompanied by her band The Buzzing Flies. Ted Koppel has an eloquent errection. He always shoots from the hip. You find your way into the bedroom reunited with your loved ones like Captain Janeway and her crew of Camel Lights. Is it any good, you say, slipping under the sheets like the rent check sliding under the landlord’s door. I don’t get the first poem. Read it. I flip the channels and find an infomercial selling other James Tate books. I like this poem a lot, you say and I say, What does this poem have to do with conception. I would start the poem here with the typhoon and then end with Mama and Papa on the shore. No, No, No, you say, James Tate is saying that babies come from anywhere like the moon and maybe play with an American flag. But by now you’re conversing with my foot which is already half-asleep dreaming of little green men. Michael Gessner Foo 2002 Paulownia wood, 14" x 14" x 18" See more work by Michael Gessner   IT'S NOT SO MUCH HIS KISS I RECALL AS HIS VOICE 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     THE HUDSON WAKES YOU UP EACH MORNING Outside your window, the sun makes a smash against the darkest wave of water. You could peek through the blinds but it would be like an infant opening its eyes to Promethian fire, lava the first crackle turning to stone. A sea breeze blows smoke in your throat and you can’t finish your sentence. You could turn off the clang of old-fashioned alarm, destroy the dream you and a hundred gulls share, glare from the Chrysler tower, sidewalk renderings, colored chalk that fades with the slightest hint of rain, the Sunday afternoon sound of pedestrians stomping their soles on pavement. You don’t mind a chill, don’t mind a draft though cotton sheets can’t stop seasons turning over like rush hour traffic. Your parents wonder if they did all they could. They wonder why you never pick up the phone. The voice on the machine isn’t you even though it says it is. The side of the bed your lover sleeps on is where you first saw the sun rise in Oregon. Your name means life it is a new day, so will its arms take you through the flames.     YOU BRING OUT THE WRITER IN ME Your breasts are couplets Your body is a sonnet Your thoughts share my soliloquy Your kiss is imagery Your eyes are iambic Your tongue is trochaic Your touch is stream of consciousness Your complexity is Eliot Your neck is Steinbeck Your stubble is cacophony Your presence is from fantasy Your brilliance is Ashbery Your ass is assonance Your penis is epic Your torso is a tanka Your rambling is a renga Your fucking is foreshadowing Your sighs are the climax Your orgasms are onomatopoeia ................................onomatopoeia ................................onomatopoeia Your clinging is Sexton Your ejaculation is sprung rhythm Your testicles are testaments Your backbones are stanzas Your viewpoints omnipotent I see you in epilogue going going gone     Regie Cabico won the 1993 Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam and took top prizes in the 1993, 1994, and 1997 National Poetry Slams. He has received three New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships for Poetry and Performance Art and received the Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award presented by Poets & Writers. He co-edited Poetry Nation: A North American Anthology of Fusion Poetry (Vehicule Press, 1998) and his work appears in Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, and Spoken Word Revolution, among other anthologies. He has appeared on two seasons of HBO's Def Poetry Jam and his plays have been produced at the Humana Theater Festival, Joe's Pub, The Public Theater, Dixon Place, Theater Offensive, and the Kennedy Center Play Lab. He is former artist-in-residence for NYU's Asian/Pacific/American Institute and presently works as the Artistic Director of Sol & Soul in Washington, DC.   Published in Volume 8, Number 1, Winter 2007. More by this author: Cabico's Intro to the Split This Rock Issue: Vol. 9, No. 1, Winter 2008 Regie Cabico: Audio Issue Regie Cabico: Tenth Anniversary Issue Regie Cabico on DC Slam: Literary Organizations Issue Regie Cabico: Langston Hughes Tribute Issue Regie Cabico: Floricanto Issue