#tommy pico

[gennsoup]

Hope is a charred skeleton of a house visible form a road that snakes through the valley of memory where fig trees burst from the ground like throaty laughter.

Tommy Pico, Nature Poem

[read-alert]

April is National Poetry Month! Here's some of my favorite collections! Full titles under the cut!

Feed by Tommy Pico

Black Movie by Danez Smith

The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes

The Twenty Ninth Year by Hala Alyan

If They Come for Us by Fatimah Asghar

Nature Poem by Tommy Pico

Femme in Public by Alok Vaid-Menon

IRL by Tommy Pico

I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl's Notes from the End of the World by Kai Cheng Thom

A Place Called No Homeland by Kai Cheng Thom

Homie by Danez Smith

Don't Call Us Dead by Danez Smith

Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine

[manwalksintobar]

Having Left // Tommy Pico

Like my grandfather, I keep eagles. Who believes in spiritual horseshit? There is a common misconception about Indian people, namely everything, but especially sadness. One summer the pepper tree rotted, black and twisted licorice crawling up the ground of my grandmother’s garden–– a reminder my grandfather was not my grandfather by blood. Bikini Kill had an album called Reject All American, which was not as good as the CD Version of the First Two Records or Pussy Whipped, but yielded “R.I.P.” People die. Sometimes a song reminds us about pink peppers. I feel inexorably American, in Paris, Brooklyn, Berlin, the reservation, despite vodka and liberal arts. There is a common misconception about Indians, namely everything, but especially when pink pepper trees grow cagelike in the valley, eagle screeching skyward, and he in a graveyard and I’m not there.

[lgbtqreads]

Happy National Poetry Month!

We’re celebrating National Poetry Month with – what else – queer poetry recommendations! This page contains a select few titles, but we do, of course, have entire poetry pages, so please avail yourselves! Poetry Collections All Earthly Bodies by Michael Mlekoday From cities and cross-country bus rides to swamps and fern forests, Michael Mlekoday’s All Earthly Bodies celebrates the ungentrifiable,…

[haveyoureadthisqueerbook]

[haveyoureadthispoem-poll]

“Wherever we go, needs feed and I find it harder and harder to / believe benevolence is the thing Thousands of Yazidi girls // missing and plastic fills the ocean’s mouth and the cursive of / yr name still occupies the canopy of my throat Fuel, the under- // pinning What fires your gd engine Rigor, mortis Cold as / unmoving or unmoved The opposite of music Warm in the // cold universe Molten, forming A rock becoming magma / becoming lava becoming land Land, the trauma of lava Lava // the lamp of the ancestors and later a cheeky find in the Junk / shop”

Reblog for a larger sample size!

[tristealven]

People tell me that [by putting pop culture and tweets in poems] I’m going to date myself—but that’s the project! I want what I write to be a product of its time, and if that means you need a companion guide to understand it in the future, so be it—that’s what they gave T.S. Eliot. I feel like bringing the profanity of life to the table—you know, getting face-fucked in a pizza parlor bathroom and putting all into a poem. Is that not literary? Is that not worthy of a record? When I’m writing, I can’t pick and choose—I want everything to be the subject of the poem, and subject to the poem.

[razorsadness]

…            The tune of memory—The drinking fountains in Paris The disappearing fog Muse, a punk alcoholic San Francisco early morning Polaroid of deep breathing in a tight sweater Burnt sienna—inviting oil slick rainbow A copper jumpsuit draped on a lampshade Lip- stick print on a bay window and the wind- ow is broken and nobody is home—Maroon road rage The way you can’t see stars in the city but we have street lamps Smudged yellow leather elbow patch on a smoking jacket The brink of eyelashes The clink of rousing from a nap Coming to or coming in or on 8pm and I’m call collecting I’m collecting Muse chasing I’m watching him slip from one boy to the next— He’s a British composer, he makes books in Baltimore, he’s flying me to Lisbon He’s an actor, musician, packs me into a pop song He’s fucking my friend—I can’t be in the same room with him. We’re getting coffee. It’s good to see you. I agree.

—Tommy Pico, from IRL (Birds, 2016)

[notes-from-chaos]

Reservation Dogs S2 E10

*Spoiler Alert* Elora, Willie Jack, Bear and Cheese finally make it to California. And bam, their car full of cash gets stolen. But not to worry, they find white Jesus who shows them the way to the beach where they then fulfill their friend Daniel's dream. I love the beach and everytime I go to one, I am in awe just like these 4 were, looking at the sea for the first time to seek peace, closure and to let go of the pain of losing a friend. It’s quite something the beach. What I like about it is that I can almost completely let go. It’s just you, the waves, its sounds and the cool breeze. The waves calm my brain chatter. Just their crashing sounds remain. I almost completely shut down and I think, I like that. To see the patterns the waves form and the colours of the sky at sunset. Orange, yellow, red, purple, pink. To feel the sand and water on my feet and to let it sink me a little, I like it all.

To see them experience the beach for the first time and learning to let go, felt good.

[spoke9]

from Junk

By Tommy Pico

Wherever we go, needs feed and I find it harder and harder to

believe benevolence is the thing Thousands of Yazidi girls

missing and plastic fills the ocean’s mouth and the cursive of

yr name still occupies the canopy of my throat Fuel, the under-

pinning What fires your gd engine Rigor, mortis Cold as

unmoving or unmoved The opposite of music Warm in the

cold universe Molten, forming A rock becoming magma

becoming lava becoming land Land, the trauma of lava Lava

the lamp of the ancestors and later a cheeky find in the Junk

shop and rising in our living room Livin groom Just bc nothing

cares doesn’t mean it lacks meaning What’s the point of

curiosity but a train rolling past the spot where the Donner

Party feasted n then go on a four hour Wikipedia downward

spiral I’m the closest thing to a mime parade I whisper, home

late tiptoeing down the creaky hallway tryin not to wake my

roommates Nice chicken parm, sluts, I say to my fingers at

lunch Dissociation is evacuating from the inside I just know

we’ll have a good time Junk: a relief map of yr traumas Dipping

yr whole arm into the bin of sunflower seeds I’m in my Shonda

Rhimes Year of Yes n so far it’s pretty freak Gave a beej 2 a

logger in town for a football game at his hostel (almost wrote

hostile) the old-fashioned way, as in I met him at a bar after

lingering eye contact No apps Told him I was writing this poem

Flush with success after only eating half the cheeseburger for

dinner For the first time in my life it wasn’t no burger or four

burgers Full on Rocky situation He said he was flattered every

time his gf’s gay friends grabbed his beer can Bacon-wrapped-

date-flavored Doritos The artifice of order Predictability,

measured time, present wrapping Order, Order, Pockets of

Order Or, Durham I dumped a boy from Raleigh today The

baton of Junk The dance whirls Whorls War Tortle Cut to mall

dressing room thousand outfits montage Ignorance as a tool to

revive the feeling of doing something new Junk has to be the

poem of our time Pointless accumulation Clinging to a million

denials Why do you need an assault rifle? What if radioactive

bears Buying in bulk Afraid of forgetting that night in 2007

when Chantal shouted jamiroquai is holding this party

together!!!! Junk is the garbage ppl keep Didn’t they tell you

I’m a meteorologist but for people What’s that called? Psychic?

Psychic side chick In maths, “arbitrary” is a thing w/o specific

value Quite the Junkery The world, all of its rock formations

and space missions and presidents and religious phobias and

fashions fossils All of it has always seemed so arbitrary to me,

bc to survive this long into an occupation feels sometimes so

arbitrary to be And then sometimes so divine Who else could

survive but my line It’s true, your Junk won’t save you from a

tsunami, but I’m descended from a group whose culture history

language gods cosmology calendar stories government gait was

capital “O” Obliterated I’ll stop writing this when it stops hap-

pening So when I “get” anything it’s hard to let go Resisting

death for generations, I want to make the opposite of death No

excuse for a vanilla bean tapioca ball attitude Ever bought a

McFlurry n shouted yr dead inside but yew were pointing a

finger at yrself and, horrified, yew screamed Ran home but half-

way home yew forgot what yew were doing n bought a pair of

sneaker boots at DSW or just me? I’m building the archive of a

life that shouldn’t exist Wristband from that gay club in

Cartagena where we danced w/ the self-proclaimed Perez

Hilton of Colombia Every bar frankly should have tostones

smellin up the grill Is a poem abt Junk itself merely an accum-

ulation of doomsday and birth certificates If part of Junk is

letting go, partly Junk is letting go of you Junk finds a new boo

•

“Control” by Janet Jackson is one of the greatest songs in the

nation Warm hearts sparkle in the colonial afternoon Control

is a reaction to something smacking that cracks the future

w/ no precedent We call this a paradigm shift — say we were

totally blindsided Janet wants to take control from her parents

From the loss of a first love Control of the narrative Janet

wants to Black Cat in boxy military garb Janet wants to show

you her midriff and introduce J. Lo to the general public in

a few albums Shock is a kind of collision A booming confusion

The shudder and the shot are almost indistinguishable Shock

has its electric correlate, but is also itself by what surrounds

the event: a quiet dinner party vs sweaty racing thoughts And

what do you make of it My friend said he found out his crush

graduated college in 2014 n hates himself And I’m like wait

til yr my age thinkin, I totally still look like I’m in my 20s Then

it turns out the dude you were makin out with was born the

year Janet, the album, came out What the literal fudge An hour

ago you were singing “That’s the Way Love Goes” at karaoke

In my defense, taller dudes always look older How to negotiate

control and the lack of control When yr slap hand gets itchy OK

whenever anybody dumps you just think of them as a gif of a

white dude wilding out to Wu Tang in a cardigan then suddenly

falling into the Grand Canyon — Dating is all the way dumb I

don’t know what, if any of this, will reach yr peepers but I want

to ask you this (and I am guilty of making ppl wade thru some

bullshit b4 getting to my point): What do you turn to when

breath dashes from yr body like it’s on the lamb? Cindy Craw-

ford says lighting is everything Take a selfie from the sun-

blown window Even supermodels say “lighting” It’s comforting!

But there’s also value in exposing yr engine #BadSelfie Archaic

but also so fresh: self-expression Trust is a thing that guides

you thru a feed The voice like a handshake I’m in front of you

There is paper and a trade-off This is ancient, like pixel drift

What’s under the hood of irritation We call complication a knot

A knotted life that doesn’t get to be undone Who here has a

clear, linear rope? Denial! You have to love yr knots You have

to shout them out Curate if need be Janet turns her knots into

songs Sonic beauty (tho fuck beauty) Knot is the response A

manager is like a politician Not the minutiae but the orchest-

ration The dark forest It’s hard not to inhale The cave is where

to turn when you’ve no other recourse This isn’t a discussion

This isn’t a mandate (lol man date) This isn’t an answer This is

a lineage: Lascaux, Keith Haring, Rihanna How do you draw

breath? In and down Heel to crown Janet says I’m in control

and ends Don’t make me lose it As if she knows what’s to come.

The battle of control is in learning to make, and giving it up

[gennsoup]

People r so concerned abt "the Earth" in the sense of kale salad and bruised gin She'll be just fine. We might not make it, hopefully.

Tommy Pico, Nature Poem

[4setsofcorsets]

Fuck yeah tommy pico. If you don’t read him you’re a coward

Nature Poem

Tommy Pico

Nature Poem follows Teebs--a young, queer, American Indian (or NDN) poet--who can't bring himself to write a nature poem. For the reservation-born, urban-dwelling hipster, the exercise feels stereotypical, reductive, and boring. He hates nature. He prefers city lights to the night sky. He'd slap a tree across the face. He'd rather write a mountain of hashtag punchlines about death and give head in a pizza-parlor bathroom; he'd rather write odes to Aretha Franklin and Hole. While he's adamant--bratty, even--about his distaste for the word "natural," over the course of the book we see him confronting the assimilationist, historical, colonial-white ideas that collude NDN people with nature. The closer his people were identified with the "natural world," he figures, the easier it was to mow them down like the underbrush. But Teebs gradually learns how to interpret constellations through his own lens, along with human nature, sexuality, language, music, and Twitter. Even while he reckons with manifest destiny and genocide and centuries of disenfranchisement, he learns how to have faith in his own voice.

(Affiliate link above)

[manwalksintobar]

from Nature Poem // Tommy Pico

Like poison oak or the Left Eye part in “Waterfalls” you become a little bit of everything you brush against. Today I am a handful of raisins and abt 15 ppl on the water taxi.

When my dad texts me two cousins dead this week, one 26 the other 30, what I’m really trying to understand is what trainers @ the gym mean when they say “engage” in the phrase “engage your core” also “core”

restless terms batted back and forth.

Rest is a sign of necrosis. Life is a cycle of jobs. The biosphere is alive with menthol smoke and my unchecked voicemails. I, for one, used to believe in God and comment boards

I wd say how far I am from my mountains, tell you why I carry Kumeyaay basket designs on my body, or how freakishly routine it is to hear someone died.

but I don't want to be an identity or a belief or a feedbag. I wanna b me. I want to open my arms like winning a footrace and keep my stories to myself, I tell my audience. Grief is sneaking cigs from the styrofoam cups on the tables next to the creamers and plates of Mary's pineapple upside-down cake, running off to the playground behind the schoolroom trailers to (try and) smoke them We were supposed to grow old together, hold down food, run for cover, give birth. Body, the job was to keep breathing.

[lgbtqreads]

Fave Five: Indigenous Fiction Audiobooks

Fave Five: Indigenous Fiction Audiobooks

All links are Libro.fm affiliate. Elatsoe and A Snake Falls to the Earth by Darcie Little Badger, narrated by Shaun Taylor-Corbett & Kinsale Hueston (YA) The Summer of Bitter and Sweet by Jen Ferguson, narrated by Julie Lumsden (YA) A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt, narrated by Jesse Nobess This Town Sleeps by Dennis Staples, narrated by Kaipo Schwab Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse, narrated…

[haveyoureadthisqueerbook]

[milf-stevebuscemi]

get in, loser- we're touring landscapes of the interior

Tommy Pico, Nature Poem