Poem of the Week: Regie Cabico

 
A Queerification

for Creativity and Crisis at the National Mall

queer me     

shift me     

transgress me   

tell my students i'm gay    

tell chick fil a i'm queer  

tell the new york times i'm straight    

tell the mail man i'm a lesbian   

tell american airlines  

i don't know what my gender is   

like me 

liking you 

like summer blockbuster armrest dates

armrest cinematic love 

elbow to forearm in the dark    

humor me queerly    

fill me with laughter   

make me high with queer gas      

decompress me from centuries of spanish inquisition

& self-righteous judgment 

like the blood my blood   

that has mixed w/  the colonizer

 & the colonized    

in the extinct & instinct to love  

bust memories of water & heat 

& hot & breath 

beating skin on skin fluttering    

bruise me into vapors    

bleed me into air    

fly me over sub-saharan africa & asia & antarctica  

explode me from the closet of my fears   

graffiti me out of doubt     

bend me like bamboo   

propose to me   

divorce me   

divide me into your spirit 2 spirit half spirit 

& shadow me  w/ fluttering tongues

& caresses  beyond head  

heart chakras   

fist smashing djembes   

between my hesitations    

haiku me into 17 bursts of blossoms & cold saki     

de-ethnicize me    

de-clothe me     

de-gender me in brassieres 

& prosthetic genitalias   

burn me on a brazier    

wearing a brassiere    

in bitch braggadocio soprano bass    

magnificat me in vespers 

of hallelujah & amen    

libate me in halos 

heal me in halls of femmy troubadors    

announcing my hiv status

or your status   

i am not afraid to love you     

implant dialects as if they were lilacs   

in my ear   

medicate me with a lick & a like

i am not afraid to love you   

so demand me       

reclaim me     

queerify me

 

  

-Regie Cabico   

  

Used by permission.

Photo by Les Talusan 

  

  

Regie Cabico  is one of the country's leading innovators and pioneers of poetry and spoken word, having won 3 top prizes in the 1993, 1994 & 1997 National Poetry Slams. Bust Magazine ranked him in the 100 Men We Love, and The Kenyon Review called him "the Lady Gaga of Poetry." He won a 2006 Best Performance Art Production award for his work on "Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind." 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, and Split This Rock, and has served as faculty at Banff Arts Center's Spoken Word Program. Regie curates and co-hosts La Ti Do: A Weekly Cabaret & Spoken Word Series. He received the Writers for Writers Award for his work with at-risk youth from Poets and Writers. With Brittany Fonte, he co-edited a collection of North American and United Kingdom queer poetry, Flicker and Spark, a 2014 Lambda Literary Award Nominee for Best Anthology.

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