by Tommy Pico
To compose or set-
tle
I will not
DEATH TOLL IN PUERTO RICO CLOSER TO 5,000 THAN THE OFFICIAL ACCOUNT OF 64
write about sit-ups or Pepto-Bismol
To bring into agreement or harmony, make compatible or consistent. Reconciling the derelict railway’s past to the park’s future. The city to nature. The deathless cycle of seasons to this final second. I farted
on a plane
and no matter how many air
nozzles
you open it’s (the fart) not
going anywhere
From the Middle English
from the Latin
meaning to make good again. Repair. Which alludes to a previous rupture. Breakage. We assumed that somehow just being together, itself, was the act of repair. At one point there was a point, a
unity
a whole, something unbroken, something uniform, something together, something that held on June 1491 Our fingers braided Skipping to the deli in the summer song Something that leaped along the seats to greet each other in the spring afternoons when my allergies thunderstorm’d into full on bronchitis but I was so determined to see Beyoncé’s Lemonade in HBO realtime SIDEBAR it was cute af we made yellow rice and plantains and vodka lemonades to keep it yellow themed.
Track 6: “Love Drought” by Beyoncé. The part that underlies a break in the cycle, the circuit, through which all this unnoticed love leaks out—floating in the hair I mean air. How to repair? When to care? I’m try/ing. So are you. That is the most important thing. That sometimes yr preternaturally attracted to someone, to the perfect denim jacket of their personality quirk but maybe the protein sequence never meant romantic. How could we have seen
That doesn’t mean perfect. It means work.
I knew from the beginning I wasn’t bringing Proxima Centauri b home mostly bc I’m sporting the largest chest zit (or chacne) in American history it’s painful and cystic and volcanic and disgusting like a pepperoni pimple in between my two nipples I look like the three-tit alien from Total Recall but he’s totally tall and striking with this long dark hair you just want to yank while he’s cracker jack hammering into you while making in his mind sincere eye contact and maybe even on the edge of blurting does it hurt? are you okay? which, don’t get ahead of yrself bud and it’s got you wondering does he actually have a small penis or is this an average sized dick on a jolly green giant but somewhere in the bar crawl in your new neighborhood bc you’ve had to move for the like 69th time in this metropolis for the rich stupid puke town that bucks stability like, well, a buck somewhere after the second Bells Two Hearted you realize two things 1) I’m not saying Proxima Centauri b is dumb I’m not saying you can hear the ocean He just doesn’t have much to say it’s like he makes an echo of himself so when I say “this bar is cute” he nods and says “this bar is cute” or when I say that summer I lived in Columbia once there was a rainstorm so severe “a whole hillside of people died in my sleep” and he says “a whole hillside of people died wow” and 2) Stellar wind hits Proxima Centauri b at about 2k times the pressure experienced by Earth so that plus the radiation coming off its red dwarf host star has completely blown its atmosphere away making the place completely uninhabitable. Next planet.
[in three voices, like a braid: Sundeck & Water Feature]
swamp milkweed, Asclepias incarnata; uh-SKLEE-pee-us in-kar-NAY-tuh
cardinal flower, Lobelia cardinalis; lo-BEE-lee-ah kar-din-AL-iss
bitter panicgrass, Panicum amarum; PAN-ih-kum ah-MAR-um
white turtlehead, Chelone glabra; keh-LOE-nee GLAY-bruh
I’m nervous
where I feel
most
free
A fuss
in my noggin
like a bell with a big dong until I can’t hear anything else. The wave pulls back on the sand, the sand suddenly alive with crawlers It’s like you were raised around zombies or something Leo said, spread out on the towel and slathering sunscreen on my neck my back. You got out, right? You survived the zombie apocalypse but yr afraid you got bit or something, that the virus or whatever, their virus, circulates in you. In the distance, a kid watches his sandcastle battered by the waves. He delights.
My spirits are protective
of me They’re above me now, a cloud of light plugged
into my back I wanted to stay alive and now they feed me and flow out of my hands This
was our vow—but sometimes the vows you take to stay
protected came at a time when you were particularly
78 MILLION ACRES OF OUR OCEANS OPENED UP FOR OFFSHORE DRILLING
vulnerable. Necessarily. My spirits surround me like a cloud of disapproving aunties, keeping most of you at bay. A childhood merged
into my love-space So compacted, that compartment Is there room
for a lover I mean agar-agar from the algae
make a powder
make me thickly Dear reader,
Are letters a repository for all the things I’m going to say to you, or the things I can never say to you? Prepare
the ingredients separately before throwing them together. Follow
the course of the recipe like a mnemonic device Hand me
the thermometer and bend over Oh, you didn’t know?
We’re getting hitched! You mud-puddling this far is basically
a marriage contract. We’re seeing each other thru. It’s the only
shade of commitment I can offer you.
Once I dated a dude who made scents for fun.
Unlike taste, which is largely innate, he said rising up from the foam bed in his Hollister skivvies in the Taaffe Lofts off Classon, smell is more associative. When he made scents he talked in metaphors and it made me love him more. This one, he said tincture dropping onto a blotter then offering it up to me like a prayer, I call The Sky Is Blue and Mom Is Sad
His low barrel baritone vibrating
in harmony with the din of A/C him crackling
through me. I brewed him
a jalapeño infused whiskey
a week before his birthday
but he dumped me
on text the next day
I drank the whiskey.
Next planet.
I say, “it’s fine.” I say
“some things need to be boiled
in order to release
their flavor.”
Bonito flakes.
The meat relaxes.
The meat the blood The leeks are almost done!
Preheat the oven to 420 degrees.
Wash the bird and remove its innards and cut
off
all the schmaltz.
Oil literally everything.
Stuff garlic, onion, and quartered lemon into the cavity
Spread the rigid cubes of sweet potatoes and bunched
brussels sprouts
around the pan
Pepper and salt liberally
Sprinkle with thyme
Avoid making stupid thyme puns like thyme after thyme, or thyme is on my side, or right in the nick of thyme, or thyme waits for no one, or thyme’s up! or thyme out New York, or if I could turn back thyme, or I’ve had the thyme of my life and I never felt this way before, or thyme warp, or thyme in a bottle, or I got that summerthyme summerthyme sadness, thyme and thyme again, first thyme I ever saw yr face, thymes they are a changin, it’s the most wonderful thyme of the year, it’s the thyme of the season when love runs high, love me two thymes, or once, twice, three thymes a lady—be a gd adult.
Jess pulls meat from the ribcage
like her grandmother
The most flavorful parts are
closest
to the bone. Everything smells
like fuzzy comfort
A season used to be an authority figure
WHALE DIES IN THAILAND AFTER SWALLOWING 80 PLASTIC BAGS
but now I can get tomatoes anytime of the year
Alaska Air. Me
troLink. MTS. BC Ferries.
Don’t fuck
with those boys
in San Francisco, they’re all vers tops
until the red light
comes
on
Girl
careful with those boys
in LA, make plans
all night
and forget how to text
all day
Can I just say!
Seattle is a trick
cos all the boys wanna wear nail
polish but none of them want to suck dick
Candlelight is not too poetic to mention in a poem if we say the light slicks across our faces like mud butt.
The candlelight slicked across our faces like mud butt. If I’d have known that was the last time I’d see his face lit at night I might have paid attention to the tall shadows. Cast, like a line. Catching connection. The ancestors say, sit up straight.
He “did” sales. Spent our dates polishing the poop chute of his attributes. I’m a people person he said over soggy vinegar and mayo fish n chips. Sales is about being a good listener, he’d coo into my ear after he picked my napkin off the floor and glossed it across my lap. I think . . . I think my worst quality is that I’m too real, I speak my mind too much, he said unprompted. He was like 6'5. His arms
made me want to throw myself
down
a flight of stairs. Touch crazed, I’d burrow
into bed, my mind alive with whatever the word
is when you can’t olive oil NO—when you and sleep
are like oil and water. I’d burrow
into bed, calmed by even the idea of him around
me, calmed so completely that all my sighs
came out in shudders and pies. But the days
and weeks wore without momentum. We drive to the light-
house Mimosa flute bodies clink cheers salud Then he drove
me home. Drop off the same time every night Arms
stay an idea. His arms abstract. So I
go
Lighting the horizon line like always. I go
and it’s far.
Day 69 of tour:
TTC. STM. A Streetcar Named I’m Tired.
YES
I’m going to Diet Coke break eat
a hot dog to the gods
in front of these cat-
calling construction workers while making smoky eye
contact until they look
away
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
I’m gonna eat a banana at Star
bucks square
stance
in front
of the man who painstakingly ordered
his half caff two pump vanilla chai double
sweet extra hot espresso shot latte HOLY
FUCK JAMES COMEY IS 6'8 TSA regulations
state
you can have one
carry-on bag and one
personal item only.
All other bags need to be checked
oh and drop
dead.
Hey,
morning.
Do you want to get breakfast or something?
At least a coffee? What is the difference
between being alone
and being
lonely?
Track 7: “Hold On, We’re Going Home” by Drake. Ignore the music video entirely. I mean really, it’s paternalistic garbage take my word for it or don’t. Focus on the super earnest part that feels real af rn about how hard it is to do “these things” alone. Less survivor’s guilt and more I’m thriving guilt
Alone
is the physical
feeling, literal proximity
just not being around other bodies
Lonely
is a desire, the urge
for a companion or sympathetic
compatibility.
Something on the other side of the country.
Something shivering or
like
feeling incomplete
right?
(But there are so many people inside me.)
Is this a recapitulation of that Aristophanes myth?
It doesn’t feel worth it to spit
the ins and outs of the conflict
As if there could be
any other
way.
FINE, twist my arm you bullies I’ll put on pants. What happened
was the train was killing
people. It wasn’t exactly a speed demon
AND there was a man on horseback waving red
ahead
of the train and still it was killing people all along tenth
avenue, or death
avenue as it was known
So they lifted it—up the ladder to the roof—raised the train line High
Line, a hanging monument to the appetite of the sky
Track 8: “Heartbeats” by The Knife (or honestly the José González cover but I’m a sucker for Karin Dreijer). Am I the only one who thinks this song is about atheism? Focus on the part where she sings that calling on hands from above for stability, to “lean on,” isn’t good enough for her. Hands of above? No, I need the hands right in front. Maybe the hands under. Hands around. But not hands of above. Prayer never helped nobody do nothing.
30 feet in the rowdy
air, overlooking the yearly city sea change of
Lenape
land
and the river, the farmers markets into printing presses into art galleries, it was called “the life line of New York” because it was built in part to transport milk, butter, eggs, meat, and cheese from farms upstate into the city.
On the ground, the last man on horseback to precede the train down the avenue waved through fourteen freight cars filled with oranges. After decades of life, in 1980 the final
chug
on the High Line train were three boxcars filled with turkeys for Thanksgiving Day.
After almost 30 years
of being
abandoned
the wild line I mean High Line became an accidental meadow
of roses
ailanthus trees
dandelions
Virginia creeper
black cherry
chives
Queen Anne’s lace A wild, edenic recapturing of neglect
The park itself is a version of this, a matrix design
of microclimates in layered
associations that approximate the wilderness
with wildness, a curated dance of plant surprises—the shadbush vibrating its hue from apricot to dogwood. The gardens stay unfinished. The buildings grow and grow their spears of shade over the park where some grasses persist, others thrive, and some just die.
[in three voices, like a braid: Northern Spur]
skyblue aster, Aster azureus; ASS-tur a-ZUR-ee-us
Pennsylvania sedge, Carex pensylvanica; KAIR-ecks pen-sill-VAY-nih-kuh
wild-oat, Chasmanthium latifolium; kaz-MAN-thi-um lat-ih-FOE-lee-um
Indian physic, Porteranthus stipulatus; pour-ter-AHN-thus try-foe-lee-AY-tuh
Ok so in Plato’s Symposium
the philosopher Aristophanes makes
this speech at some white
robe
sweaty ball
table linen dinner
about the origin of love.
That at one point
there were three sexes:
the children of the sun (two men)
the children of the earth (two women)
and the children of the moon (man and woman)
attached at the back
Now before you get all
sapiosexual
on me, I don’t know this from Plato
I know this from Hedwig and the Angry Inch
N E WAYS, so yeah at one point
the three sexes were whole
round balls
adherent to each
other attached at
the back and spinning
in their own orbit.
The problem
was people
GUNMAN FIRES INTO OKLAHOMA CITY RESTAURANT
were too
content in self-possession
there was no ambition no thrill of the chase
no colonialism. So the gods split
the people down the back
and ever since we’ve been looking
for our other
half
Lonely as a kind of math.
Track 9: “Electric Feel” by MGMT. Sub in the Justice remix if yr feeling festive (you can thank me later). First things first, change the pronoun from “girl” to “boy.” Ooh, boy. That’s that ecstatic touch, I need some grounding. Tried to get into new MGMT but the first song is called “She Works Out Too Much” and I was like, nah I’m good.
Me n Wilkes wait outside the burrito restaurant for the rest of our party to arrive and it is in fact the place with the burritos so hefty Nalini calls them “food tubes” so usually I just get the flautas and 52 strawberry margaritas but we’re not even annoyed to be waiting outside because it’s still the part in spring where a night warm enough to be outside without a space suit is a revelation and a blessing, and because even though neither of us is sentimental enough to say anything: she is glad I’m back home and I’m glad to be back, too.
Me: They say Ross 128 b is one of the most Earth-like exoplanets we’ve come across, but it revolves around a red dwarf star which—75% of stars in the sky are red dwarf stars. And because they’re so much smaller and cooler than the sun, a planet in the habitable zone gotta be very close to it. Way more close than the Earth
Wilkes: What are you getting at
She leans back on the round NYC bike rack, careful to hover a half inch in her white sheath dress with the red buckle and black polka dots.
Me: If you’re that close to your parent star, the gravity involved means you’re tidally locked with one half of the planet permanently—
Wilkes: Yr not gonna catch me off guard this time, Teebs. I did my research and the Internet said: Do you know this thing called the Drake equation?
I shake my head no in a way that suggests, “math? really?!” in my oversized blue striped sweater and short-shorts which is my fall specialty I call it the Empire Records Liv Tyler look
Wilkes: There are between 100 and 400 billion stars in our galaxy. Billion! And for each one of these stars in our galaxy, there IS a galaxy in our observable universe. The moooost conservative scientific estimate is that 5% of those stars are sun-like, and the most conservative estimate is that of those sun-ish stars, 22% of those might have Earth-like worlds. That means 100 billion-billion Earth-like worlds exist out there. You mean to tell me, you have the complete hubris to believe we are the only outpost of LIFE?