Staff Sergeant Michael Argumedo is a U.S. Army Reservist from Lawrence, Kansas stationed in Kuwait, just a few miles from the Iraqi border. He writes under the pen name Mickey Cesar, and his poetry has been described as dealing with "Saturday nights alone, Sunday morning cafes full of cigarette smoke" and loss.
Cesar returned home recently on a two-week leave for the release of his first full-length poetry collection called Vanishing Point. KCUR's Laura Spencer talked to the poet outside a downtown coffee shop on the last day of his leave.