#tommy pico

[gennsoup]

Hope is a charred skeleton of a house visible from 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,…

[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

[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!

[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)

[milf-stevebuscemi]

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

Tommy Pico, Nature Poem

[lisareadsthings]

Look, I’m sure you really do just want to wear those dream catcher earrings. They’re beautiful. I’m sure you don’t mean any harm, I’m sure you don’t really think abt us at all. I’m sure you don’t understand the concept of off-limits. But what if by not wearing a headdress in yr music video or changing yr damn mascot and perhaps adding .05% of personal annoyance to yr life for the twenty minutes it lasts, the 103 young ppl who tried to kill themselves on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation over the past four months wanted to live 50% more

Tommy Pico, Nature Poem

[radiantcircle-if]

Profile: César

One of the highest ranking earth sorcerers in the world, César is seen as the unofficial heir of the current Night Luminary—and he takes the role seriously. As your brother’s best friend, he has been a permanent fixture in your life as far as you remember—another persistent reminder of the magic that has remained inaccessible to you and the community that left you behind. He’s at least an attractive reminder, even if it’s unfortunate that his rare smirk proves that he knows it.

Family name: Pico

Circle: Night Circle

Magic: earth

Birth month: November

Birth place: Tijuana, MX (territory of the Kumeyaay Nation)

Education: bachelor's

Occupation: Archumbricar

Favorite place: desert

Favorite drink: beer

Favorite color: he doesn't have one, but he'll say it's brown if asked

Most prized possession: book collection

Handwriting: somewhat unserious looking, simple print

Always in bag: a book and business related paraphernalia

Family: he has a good relationship with his younger brother Rafa, and his father Alejandro and mother Tarhíata are proud of his influence in the Circle; on the other hand, he doesn't have much love for his uncle Tangaxoan or his cousin Eréndira, but he'd still kill for them

Friends: Arseau is his best friend, and he considers his younger brother Rafa a close friend and his guard Damianos an ally; he's not the type to let others know him well enough to call him a friend, though many might claim the title anyway, and you know he has never and will never consider you a friend

Appearance: amber eyes, dark brown hair in a short buzz cut, never clean-shaven, brown skin with a warm undertone, very tall (somewhere above 193cm/6'4"), muscular, lots of tattoos, wears earrings, usually dresses in a bespoke suit, favorite accessory is a simple necklace

Romance: solo-route (with a possible rivalry with his brother), back-and-forth (borderline love/hate), (possible first love), one of the slower burns

You find César's brooding demeanor and deep sense of duty to be intimidating, but you knew him before he became an Archumbricar—when he was just your brother's best friend who made you laugh when you were sad. Those who look up to him call him a hero, the master of his own destiny. His cards in the Major Arcana are the Emperor and the World.

〉 Sections: Profiles, Editorials, Articles, Ask Me, Answers, Quotes

[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

[niibaataa]

Some Indigenous Poets to Read

Disclaimer: Some of these poems deal with pregnancy, colonialism, substance abuse, murder, death, and historical wrongs. Exercise caution.

Tacey M. Atsitty [Diné] : Anasazi, Lady Birds' Evening Meetings, Things to Do With a Monster.

Billy-Ray Belcourt [Cree] : NDN Homopoetics, If Our Bodies Could Rust, We Would Be Falling Apart, Love is a Moontime Teaching.

CooXooEii Black [Arapaho] : On Mindfulness, Some Notes on Vision, With Scraps We Made Sacred Food.

Trevino L. Brings Plenty [Lakota] : Unpack Poetic, Will, Massacre Song Foundation.

Julian Talamantez Brolaski [Apache] : Nobaude, murder on the gowanus, What To Say Upon Being Asked To Be Friends.

Gladys Cardiff [Cherokee] : Combing, Prayer to Fix The Affections, To Frighten a Storm.

Freddy Chicangana [Yanacuna] : Of Rivers, Footprints, We Still Have Life on This Earth.

Laura Da' [Shawnee] : Bead Workers, The Meadow Views: Sword and Symbolic History, A Mighty Pulverizing Machine.

Natalie Diaz [Mojave] : It Was The Animals, My Brother My Wound, The Facts of Art.

Heid E. Erdrich [Anishinaabe] : De'an, Elemental Conception, Ghost Prisoner.

Jennifer Elise Foerster [Mvskoke] : From "Coosa", Leaving Tulsa, The Other Side.

Eric Gansworth [Onondaga] : Bee, Eel, A Half-Life of Cardio-Pulmonary Function.

Joy Harjo [Muscogee] : An American Sunrise, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, A Map to The Next World.

Gordon Henry Jr. [Anishinaabe] : How Soon, On the Verve of Verbs, It Was Snowing on The Monuments.

Sy Hoahwah [Comanche/Arapaho] : Colors of The Comanche Nation Flag, Definitive Bright Morning, Typhoni.

LeAnne Howe [Choctaw] : A Duck's Tune, 1918, Iva Describes Her Deathbed.

Hugo Jamioy [Kamentsá] : PUNCTUAL, If You Don't Eat Anything, The Story of My People.

Layli Long Soldier [Lakota] : 38, WHEREAS, Obligations 2.

Janet McAdams [Muscogee] : Flood, The Hands of The Taino, Hunters, Gatherers.

Brandy Nālani McDougall [Kānaka Maoli] : He Mele Aloha no ka Niu, On Finding my Father's First Essay, The Island on Which I Love You.

dg nanouk okpik [Inupiaq-Inuit] : Cell Block on Chena River, Found, If Oil Is Drilled In Bristol Bay.

Simon J. Ortiz [Acoma Pueblo] : Becoming Human, Blind Curse, Busted Boy.

Sara Marie Ortiz [Acoma Pueblo] : Iyáani (Spirit, Breath, Life), Language (part of a compilation), Rush.

Alan Pelaez Lopez [Zapotec] : the afterlife of illegality, A Daily Prayer, Zapotec Crossers.

Tommy Pico [Kumeyaay] : From "Feed", from Junk, You Can't be an NDN Person in Today's World.

Craig Santos Perez [Chamorro] : (First Trimester), from Lisiensan Ga'lago, from "understory".

Cedar Sigo [Suquamish] : Cold Valley, Expensive Magic, Secrets of The Inner Mind.

M. L. Smoker [Assiniboine/Sioux] : Crosscurrent, Heart Butte, Montana, Another Attempt at Rescue.

Laura Tohe [Diné] : For Kathryn, Female Rain, Returning.

Gwen Nell Westerman [Cherokee/Dakota] : Dakota Homecoming, Covalent Bonds, Undivided Interest.

Karenne Wood [Monacan] : Apologies, Abracadabra, an Abecedarian, Chief Totopotamoi, 1654.

Lightning Round! Writers with poetry available on their sites:

Shonda Buchanan [Coharie, Cherokee, Choctaw].

Leonel Lienlaf [Mapuche].

Asani Charles [Choctaw/Chickasaw].

[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.

[librarycards]

hello everyone, and welcome to my Q3 book recs of 2024! this has been a *huge* book summer for me, not least because i've gotten to visit and chat with so many independent booksellers. after all, my debut novel, Failure to Comply (GR) (Storygraph), is now available for order, and I've been running around doing events and other publicity things to celebrate! While I'm obviously not going to recommend my own book in my top 9, if you enjoy experimental speculative fiction, Mad/trans cyborgs, and evil dykes + body horror, consider checking it out.

anyway! here are my favorites from this summer. it was, as always, a tough choice, but i hope you find something you like!

Gayl Jones, White Rat

Lee Mandelo, The Woods All Black

Michael Faber, Under the Skin

Randa Jarrar, A Map of Home

Jeanne Thornton, Summer Fun

Evan Dahm, The Last Delivery

Tommy Pico, IRL

Bhanu Kapil, The Vertical Integration of Strangers

Camila Sosa Vilada, tr. Kit Maude, Bad Girls

thanks, as always, for reading + enjoying these! i enjoy sharing them with you. if you want to see more regular recs from me for a variety of media, consider subscribing to my newsletter – I share short poetry/prose; audio; books; and more every month.

tagging people below, but no pressure to do it if you're tagged, and those not tagged are enthusiastically encouraged to do this + tag me in it (whether we're mutuals or not!!)

@campgender @capricornpropaganda @fluoresensitive @closet-keys @fatehbaz @lunarianbeams

@felgueirosa @materialisnt @osmanthusoolong @punkkwix @yesthattoo

@snoopyisbisexual @stephen-deadalus @metapianycist @podcastlesbian @metamatar

@lesbianlizzybennet @flameswallower @slowtides @sawasawako @growtiredofpublicvulnerability

@abstractlesbian @grimesapologist @aldieb @bioethicists @heavenlyyshecomes @trans-axolotl & anyone else who wants to!!

[beefrobeefcal]

The Clean Plates Club feat. Joel Miller x f!reader

a HeftyThrowaway one shot drabble | Rated: G | word count: 406 warnings: weight gain, stuffed belly, teasing A/N: thanks be to Nonnie who submitted the prompt. And thank you to @strang3lov3 for the idea for this series. thank you to: @xdaddysprincessxx, @rebel-held, @romanarose, @umnitsa for their help in crafting the nachos.

Delicious regards,

Beefro👌🥩💜

Joel was in heaven, though anyone would be hard pressed to get it out of him. You were in the kitchen, cooking up a storm and he was going to be the lucky sunovabitch who would reap the benefits.

At least his heart was feeling lucky. The trial runs you ran through each weekend leading up to a major catering event made his heart sing, but his waistline, belts and clothing were saying otherwise. Between the regular meals you cooked and all the ‘tasting’ he was doing almost every Saturday and  Sunday, each Monday he’d lumber into the office and his brother would made another remark about his weight or gut or a subtle comment on how his clothes fit; sometimes Tommy would even go so far as to poke the butt end of a pencil or pen into the added bulk of his middle and laugh.

Joel would play ignorant to his thickening form and ignore Tommy telling him he must be in love because he’s getting soft in more ways than one. He wanted to slap the smug grin off his brother’s face, but he knew Tommy was right – he was getting fat off your love.

On this Saturday, you’d prepped for a Tex-Mex menu and once Joel had eaten his weight in tacos, he sat back in his chair and huffed, unbuckling his belt. As he did, he made a note that he needed a new one now that he was on the last hole – the one he had added to lengthen its life with him. Just as he was unbuttoning his jeans and letting his stuffed belly out with a groan, you walked into the dining room with another platter of nachos, loaded with beef, queso, lettuce, jalapeño, pico… the tray in your hands looked and smelled so good, making his mouth water. It almost made him forget how full he was.

“You look fit to be tied there, Miller.”, you smiled as you placed the nachos in front of him. You smoothed your hand over his very full middle. “You sure you’re up for this, baby?”

Joel huffed a laugh and shook his head. “Don’t matter. I was raised in the Clean Plates Club… I got a job to do.”

By the time he was done, Joel’s plate was indeed clean, and he sat back in the chair slightly out of breath, button up shirt ruined, and feeling pretty damn accomplished.