Junk

by Tommy Pico

  Milk-toned Oregon militias bellow Give us back our land in the

  most unironic ways Does America’s shirt look eggshell-white

  or more like white-panic? The problem with pizza is it keeps

  getting eaten The J train is stalled and another part of Brooklyn

  is on fire Sirens dry rub the brittle morning In 2011 I lived in

  the 11th arr. In a month I was finally able to order a pig shaped

  princess cake in nearly coherent French AND correct Euro at

  the boulangerie with yellow frosting curtains and the picnic

  heat The firm lady at the counter, who for weeks spied me

  silently point at the croissants and raspberry tarts and chicken

  baguette n fling whatever coins, gave me a lil wink I suaved

  home victorious First Kumeyaay in Paris with my little pink

  treat Junk loves reflection Two buskers sang “Hey, Joe” on Canal

  St. Martin n waved me over to sip 1664s and neck Our wobbly

  night at the firefighter’s ball betting which ones would wink

  back and giggle bubbles into our weak vodka crans Today

  municipal workers scrub blood off those streets Refresh.

  Refresh. Refresh. Still you didn’t like the pic Roy posted of me

  reading at the Whitney in my purple tee and acid washed

  spray-on skinnies rolled to perfect wtf is wrong with you

  spectacle What critics have called my gem-like ankles Stupid

  blustery shame Winter windchill at memorializing the saboteur

  No dummy, you have to go with yrself Commit I’m an expert at

  peacing out We all have our survival strategies growing up on

  the rez America’s first POW camps In a way I’m indebted to

  dissociation Shouting gets so small it’s almost quaint I fold it

  into my pocket Even now it’s hard for me to come/back to my

  body It’s here I hold all my selves all my Junk, and if everything

  that passes through the pile changes the pile: You have changed

  me The sentiment, cut loose from shame, floats free in the

  crescent evening Wd you call laughing at a dog heartily licking

  his balls “Dog-tainment”? Junk is discovery and anchor A chair

  is a chair is a footstool is a prop is a metaphor is a directive

  (have a seat) is kindling No dummy, “discovery” is too colonial

  If I have to defend keeping Janet Jackson in a poem, the devil is

  truly a peanut (gallery) I’m not judgmental I just don’t like anything

  you do Who cares what I think? Run thru life convinced

  yr all neutrality n earnest curiosity but that’s a lie Judgment

  happens, but that’s not a ship-falling-off-the-edge-of-the-world

  situation See momentum The thrust The wave The object and

  its continuation The lilt at the end of a breath Movement at the

  end of an obstruction Growth in the breakage, usually when

  talking to yrself in the shower or singing a Janet Stupid fragile

  male ego I whisper feedback, feedback into the pillow I dream

  and in my dream I am leaving New York for Philly This dream

  happens approx every time I sign a rent check Philly sure likes

  to brandish its colonial history Maybe I’m just bitter some ppl

  get to have history But for reals on some streets they keep the

  charming, archaic whale blubber burning oil lamp fixtures

  which, no longer using oil, might seem obsolete Whose structure

  points at a function we might no longer “get” I’ve never lit

  a lamp myself “Knowing” changes with age Ppl give you credit

  to appreciate the junk Nod to a past you’d like to remember So

  I will always keep Janet Miss Jackson If Yr Nasty in the poem If

  anything exists in 50 years I have faith in the future’s ability to

  Google Ask Jeeves Yahoo Answers YouTube tutorial Webinar

  whatever Try to freehand an ampersand Ppl say Diogenes and

  King James and shit and I accommodate yr idea of Ages Will

  you make space for mine I imagine you saying “lecithin” Teeth

  digging into yr tongue and frankly, it makes me sick Reach into

  the pile Feel the skin on the inside of yr worship It’s like yr

  asking me to tell you, as I rove over the broom handles and

  the keychains and the half bottle of vermouth—Yes of course

  it’s all good, Yr Junk in any season Yr Junk in any city Yr Junk in

  any element I’m guilty of treating my man like my enemy As if

  he stole something from me that I have to bicker back But in

  the argument’s zenith I’m petty af I don’t want to be petty I

  want to be petted as in give me a cat but here we are—Dummy,

  you’ll always succumb to yourself Shame like an Energizer

  battery it keeps going, and going, and going It’s juvenile to

  think you can glide thru life perfectly undisturbed I know what

  it’s like to feel as if every confrontation will end with someone

  literally dead To dodge confrontation instead Atoms rearrange

  arrange and remake, like proteins or Legos A tuna melt is best

  on pressed bread splashed w/ butter n garnished with curly

  fries Everyone, they say, has a new pop punk fuck boy built like

  a yeti with the stick straight Veronica Lake bang Dating is hard

  bc gay men are a garbage fire Why do ppl say they “love food”

  like it’s a revelation A secret I’m such a food-aholic Oh, like

  literally every other living organism in existence? Junk

  breathes How dare ppl be born in the ’90s I like tall guys bc I’m

  lookin for someone who can fend off the ppl who will kill us

  when we swap spit in the karaoke booth That time we hung

  out with our giddy newness at the Mexican restaurant by the

  bookstore with the best reading series in the city and the

  glassy eyes zooming in on each other Seeing only the wonder,

  like canary yellow on a canary or when our sky wraps up in

  Earth’s shadow This is my yellow heart This is my gauzy two-

  people-gazing-across-the-night-into-each-other instrumental

  situation Who owns the attraction passing between bodies We

  say neurons “fire” because a frame of mind needs the border of

  poetry Something fuzzy buzzing Your face glows coastal, leaves

  me feelin fine as the powdery shoreline at low tide Dummy, all

  our lives we are the wavelengths of light who escape the negative

  space Urge toward sunset scattered roadways, morning haze,

  and the gusting forward of time Oh shut the fuck up Voices

  change How dare you tether me to lines I wrote in like 2009

  Goin over yr Junky poems huh? Do you ever wish you cd just be

  always one self? “Whole” is a privilege and a pedestal Whole

  Foods has a delicious hot buffet Red alert DEFCON 5 Deep Space

  9 lol Clack, clack of expensive shoes slapping down the train

  platform A car backfiring Sputter of gunfire on a Snapchat story

  I don’t know where the feeling is or what to do with it n spent

  most of the day in bed with my eyes squeezed shut but then

  we went to the park and ate a vanilla ice cream sandwich and

  an empanada We went to the vigil n marched n held hands Got

  pizza and played pool at a gay bar with John & Peter bc whatever

  season it is it will not be open season on my spirit And

  then went to karaoke and after, I said I love you for the first

  time in my life said it to someone I’m dating and you
said I love

  you so much and I know where that feeling is and what to do

  with it It’s going all over the place How are the people most

  fucked by society treated the absolute worst, and those most

  coddled given the most opportunity How can “happiness” be

  anything more than a metaphor for privilege Thus my

  obsession with punchlines—stop me if you’ve heard this one:

  Who will save your stole? This is a thot experiment and there I

  go drooling When you nurse a crush for two years you become

  a boss at being tipsy All that rub, no climax Let’s wait awhile

  before we go too far I thot falling in love was a burden A kind of

  crowding on my landscape Love creates space, dummy Doesn’t

  take it up Tangy harpsichord Crunching into a crisp pink lady

  The sherbet swirls on these apples is maybe the most perfect

  color in nature The perfect denim jacket is worn, rolled, and

  the color of heavy fog tumbling from the Pacific into the bay

  “Love” is a soft fur trim The way old cotton wears thin on

  broad shoulders A line of tiny buttons on a pair of purple wool

  gloves With its fats and its salts and its sugars, Junk food was

  designed not to satisfy I have a crush on this thrift store clerk

  whose curly hair bowls when he belly lols I don’t actually know

  what that means, “perfect denim jacket” Just what I’d feel if I

  had it Trash is thrashy but Junk is gunk I sat on another pair of

  glasses and cried for a legit 15 minutes but the lenses can be

  recut and put into new frames I have a drawer of Junk glasses

  missing an arm or a lens It could be worth something one day

  I suppose Junk is also a way of not letting go—containing the

  stasis We cd potentially be alive our whole life How to be Junk

  and decisive I have this way of saying “bus” so that it rhymes

  with “moose” when I want to be festive As in Gtg or I’m gonna

  miss my boose I claw for reasons to live lol and find them Some

  days you just have to take the boose to Crown Heights for a

  tune-up Junk is anti-stasis Ashes to atoms In the sense that

  Junk wants to become again How the fuck do ppl still have

  energy for sweaty sexytimes after midnight He wants to go

  again and I want to go home, have an indica chamomile and

  slack like a boss It’s sad, not havin a 20’s stamina but once I

  learned you can make someone cum three times a night and

  they can still dump u I was like Welp Trapped there, I don’t

  want to eat apples from the tree in the yard in the neighborhood

  of that feeling anymore I like mood/lighting and draw a

  bath in my brain The bubbles spread across my knees like relief

  Do you hear cicadas? Crinkle cuts & queso with bacon and

  jalapeño The movie starts n then a bump in the Internet connection

  We are now boarding rows 15 and higher Suitcase cpl

  of months A couch surfing budget Eat Pray (Prey?) Love cpl

  of months All over the motherfucking planet looking good

  while I’m at it What I want changes like an accent, elusive as a

  mantra said with different inflections Go home with a dude cos

  he lives in a condo w/ a foam bed bc who wants to spend

  another night on Oakland friend’s green oval shag again

  Traveling broke is truly a younger person’s game Look into

  the dark sky and think, how far out does it go? Voices exist as

  thick rubber planets in my throat hole I’m a goddamn catch

  Molasses, or Mole Asses Day-Glo pink bell sleeves Over a life,

  the first times pile like dirty sheets And suddenly I’m living a

  season with the alcoholic San Francisco cos he was wearin a

  red bandanna in his profile pic We’ve all done it A thunderstorm

  rush under covers and subsequent clinic visit Basement nasal

  twee bands & their delicate white fallings feelings If his tight

  grey slacks are high-wasted and I’m high/wasted and he sits

  arms crossed in the karaoke spot and the huge bulge and

  widening pre cum stain, I will, in fact, genuflect Best thing abt

  leaving town is the poem suddenly comes differently—as if it

  needs a kind of obscurity in order to really be seen Hindsight,

  for example Sight becomes a craft of memory Memory—the

  fantasy that actually happened I believe in butterscotch candy

  and chocolate covered gummy bears from the pic n mix at the

  Virgin Atlantic terminal in San Francisco Int’l Sun smooched

  n sparkling famous band afternoon Unfurling atop East River

  State Park Kalamata olive pot Jolly Ranchers n falafel balls

  The sky in its gown of nostalgia For a minute we were in the

  donut I mean moment Confessed a mutual love of scratching

  the paint off things Melty like cheese like whipped cream Cake

  batter double fried disco lights Bobbing like those inflatable

  tube dudes Continually recycling excitement Feedback Fizzy

  All I’ve ever wanted was to feel the heat with somebody But

  mostly affairs r sort of short/intense like gas Worst thing abt

  this famous artist cokehead cheating on his girlfriend w/ me is

  the shameful thrall Pitching a tent in this terrain Let’s talk abt

  how Uranus tilted Abt how glass is neither solid nor liquid It’s

  always moving The lake in the winter when the ppl traverse

  the surface in spiky crampons Which is not a portmanteau So

  obsessed with warm in the winter Warmth is the anomaly

  Something that requires generation Engines in the stars In the

  cores Seeking heat Most of the universe burns cold Not havin

  a bf in so long I forgot how something as mundane as holding

  hands makes a target of us You reach yr arm out to rest on my

  shoulders and I pull away I’m not afraid of intimacy I’m scared

  of assault I want 2 love in spite of the violence Black cat 9 lives

  short days long nights livin on the edge not afraid to die Iraq

  facing the possibility of total economic collapse on the back of

  war and falling oil prices vs Australia’s avocado shortage One

  food truck in Sydney has resorted to using frozen stuffs Gasp!

  Café calamities It’s not even theater Sympathies swell along

  familiar lines Focus instead on dry skin and yr steadily expanding

  waistline Impulse aisle induced psychosis Too much

  credit is ascribed the panic of “self-control” It’s like some

  choices formed before I was born Hard work is hard but

  decisions, like metaphors, are built within a moat of desire

  Love in a hopeless kingdom Like, okay sugar and booze feel

  good, then bad Sometimes real bad But art feels bad before it

  feels even worse And then even the best n I just want to wear a

  pretty dress When I left yr house for the last time you said “aw,

  now I’m sad” Grief is another way of making it all about you

  How costume is yr grief? How girthy? How banshee? Everyone

  wants to be loud and public and right Whose grief can piss the

  farthest Is the poem distinct or another kind of feed I’m starvin

  Hope for yr Junk Reinvention Innovation Buttercream Words

  compound meaning all the time BEER ME yells a man at the

  bar n suddenly to beer—converted to verb Make a beer of me

  Like Junk passing 2 garbage passin
g 2 ashes passing 2 atoms

  Extinction wipes words from earth The only way to fight ISIS

  is to wipe them from the face of the earth But I’m from a group

  that others have tried to wipe from the face of the earth Had

  reasons like yours—savages, bloodthirsty, inhuman—War

  doesn’t work Anything simple is a ruse Life somehow earns its

  complications Never just the night in question I’m not saying

  gay men are bad I’m just saying I don’t like them They keep

  saying they “are paleo now, bitch” L’Oréal True Grip texturizing

  powder hair Pubes trimmed like a French garden (if any

  at all) Rag & Bone combat boots treading every social interaction

  like a battle My skin mite as well be camouflage-colored

  to these homonormative Hollister cologne smelling mean ass

  eyerolling trollers Which is why I was so freaked you even