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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?