"Mango Poem"

The World in Us

Introduction

The Editors' Introduction

Poems:

"What the Body Told" by Rafael Campo

"Mango Poem" by Regie Cabico

"Marianne Faithfull's Cigarette" by Gerry Gomez Pearlberg

"Louganis" by Eloise Klein Healy

The World in Us "Mango Poem"

By Regie Cabico
From The World in Us

Mother fetched the fruit from the mango grove
behind closed bamboo
ripped its paper-leather cover during midday recess,
before English class. Described their dance —
peaches, plums, cantaloupes — before my first-world
eyes. When the sun blazed on the dust,

She let the mellifluous fluids
fall on her assignment books.
Where the mangos were first planted, mother,
an infant, hid under gravel
swaddled by lola, my grandmother,
after my mother's aunt and uncle
were tied to the trunk
and stabbed
by the Japanese. Mother and daughter living off
fallen mangos, the bits planted in darkness,
years before I was born.

We, a family of five, left the Philippines for
California dodging
U.S. Customs with the forbidden fruit.
Thinking, who'd deprive mother of her mangos.
Head down, my father denied that we had perishable
foods and waved passports in the still air,
motioning for us
to proceed towards the terminal.
Behind a long line of travelers,

my sisters surrounded mother
like shoji screens as she hid the newspaper-covered
fruit between her legs. Mangos slept
in the hammock of her skirt, a brilliant batik
billowing from the motion
of airline caddies pushing suitcases
on metal carts.

We walked around mother like mini-airplanes,
forming a crucifix, where she was the center.
On the plane, as we crossed time zones, Mom unwrapped
her ripe mangos, the one from the tree lola planted
before she gave birth to my mother,

the daughter that left home to be a nurse
in the States,
who'd marry a Filipino navy man
and have three children of her own. Mother eating
the fruit, whose juices rained
over deserts and cornfields.

Regie Cabico is the winner of the 1993 New York Poetry Slam, a Road Poet on Lollapalooza, and the opening act of MTV's Free Your Mind Spoken Word Tour. He is the editor of Poetry Nation: An Anthology of North American Spoken Word & Written Poetry (Vehicule Press, 1998). His two poetry chapbooks are The Petting Zoo (IKON, 1994) and I Saw Your Ex-lover behind the Starbucks Counter (Big Fat Press, 1997). His work appears in numerous anthologies, including Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe (Henry Holt, 1994), The Name of Love (St. Martin's Press, 1995) and On a Bed of Rice: An Asian American Erotic Feast (Anchor Books, 1995). Spoken-word compilations in which his work appears include Grand Slam: Best of the National Slam, vol. 1 (Mouth Almighty, 1994) and Relationships from Hell (Caroline, 1994). Cabico has been featured at Joe's Pub (at the Joseph Papp Public Theater in New York), the Red Barn (Key West), and the Wonaxe Theater (Vancouver). His solo show, "onomatopoeia & a 1/4 life crisis in one act," was presented at the Seattle Fringe Festival and the Here Theater (New York). The recipient of a 1997 New York Foundation for the Arts poetry fellowship, he is a cyberjay on the Performance Channel's "GO POETRY.COM," and he curates two reading series, "Writers on the Ledge" at Dixon Place and "Realness & Rhythms" at A Different Light Bookstore in New York City.