#tommy pico
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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
#Tommy Pico#Nature Poem#hope#hope quotes#memory#laughter#Indigenous literature#Indigenous poetry#BIPOC author#LGBTQ author#queer author#poetry#poetry quotes#quotes#quotes blog#literary quotes#literature quotes#literature#book quotes#books#words#text
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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
#bookblr#poetry#national poetry month#kai cheng thom#danez smith#tommy pico#alok vaid-menon#langston hughes#fatimah asghar#hala alyan#claudia rankine
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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.
#poetry#Tommy Pico#American poetry#Indigenous poetry#grandfather#grandfathers & grandsons#Bikini Kill#elegy#mourning#death#loss#pink peppers#America
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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,…
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#Black Girl Call Home#cyrus parker#Dear Medusa#Dear Mothman#Feed#Forever Is Now#Jasmine Mans#K.A. Holt#Mariama J. Lockington#Michael Chang#Night Sky with Exit Wounds#Ocaen Vuong#Olivia Cole#Poetry#Redwood and Ponytail#Robin Gow#Synthetic Jungle#Tommy Pico
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“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!
#closed polls#polls#poetry#poems#poetry polls#poets and writing#junk#tommy pico#junk tommy pico#tommy pico junk#indigenous writers#lgbt#lgbt poetry
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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.
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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.
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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
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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)
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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
#Tommy Pico#Nature Poem#environmentalism#nihilism#earth#climate crisis#extinction#human extinction#Indigenous literature#Indigenous poetry#poetry#poetry quotes#quotes#quotes blog#literary quotes#literature quotes#literature
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get in, loser- we're touring landscapes of the interior
Tommy Pico, Nature Poem
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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.
#poetry#Tommy Pico#American poetry#Indigenous poetry#grief#Kumeyaay poetry#cousins#family#death#despair#mourning#TLC
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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
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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
#radiant circle if#rc cesar#rc profiles#rc ro#his handwriting his my favorite#he would have tattoos but i dunno what designs yet#also reiterating my rec from rafa's profile: go read tommy pico
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