by Tommy Pico
“Mince” is a criminally underused word iykwim (aityd)
I thought up a joke today about the eclipse, telling the moon to WERK BINCH SIT ON THAT SUN’S FACE YOU LUNAR SLUT YAAAAS and got sad I couldn’t river next to you and whisper up
FWIW I thought you’d bust
a gut
[in three voices, like a braid: Rail Yards]
Kentucky coffee trees, Gymnocladus dioicus; gim-no-KLA-dus dye-oh-EYE-kuss
foxglove beardtongue, Penstemon digitalis; pen-STEE-mun didge-ih-TAY-liss
Queen Anne’s lace, Daucus carota; DAW-kus kuh-ROE-tuh
Because you see dear reader, in the garden
dry foliage from the previous year’s growth gives its sugars
to the new generation. Helps protect
plants from desiccating and freezing in the winter.
Shelter for birds, hibernating
butterflies, and other insects.
Death cycle interwoven with the spring.
It took time to forget
about who we were together, so we could come back
with intention and not surrender
Jiddy says that makes sense across from me at the Echo Park vegan
brunch spot mid sorrel-bowl hoovering. Your pheromones have to recalibrate
Spring is a season of reconciliation, a suture
for the loss of winter and the summer’s sweaty
promises. Sparklers
on the beach
It’s July 4th and we’ve said no
to imperialism but yes
to public sex
We drive for hours because it’s an excuse to sing
together and I forget other people
are around and we’re driving
to the coast and the radio is cranked all the way up
and our inhibitions cranked all the way
down
Our layered associations, our accidental landscape.
I’ve tended to the garden
of our memories, like a recipe
for feelings. The derelict railroad I see when I close my eyes
grown wild with Queen Anne’s lace—
In order to see
what we would become, what we were supposed to be, we
had to abandon
ourselves. We had to go derelict,
go wild. Let the living dynamics
of the world outside us grow over us, separately—
and then recreate our wilderness
with a shimmery wildness
Not constantly recreating our memory
THIS IS WHAT A NUCLEAR STRIKE WOULD LOOK LIKE IN THE HEART OF MANHATTAN
Joe argues for the blast zone
In Hawaii they planted taro to stay alive
The waves recede and the sand looks alive with critters. Pluck them out of the ground, out of the spot on your back. You will not bleed out, I promise. Offer these crawling things up to the sun and let them go. Feel around for the spot and look inside. See? There’s molten golden hour in there It flows inside you You are in the room with your mother and father pinned against the wall Hug yourself, the small you, an act of gold The golden was growing inside you even then See it? The fire that burns inside you Stand up and hug your mother and father They are so happy to see you So happy with how you live Scoop up some of the gold and offer it to them They take the shine and radiate and offer it to their mothers and their fathers, who offer it to their mothers and their fathers and so on down the line to the site of the rupture Now the room of your family glows—the vows you made to stay protected need to be retaken Clear out the fear of being hurt
and the ancestors step aside.
In Year of the Dog, Molly Shannon plays a woman who increasingly becomes a full-on dog lady, it seems to the detriment of her romantic life, her friendships and her family. But in her final monologue voice over on the way to an animal rights protest she says, “there are . . . so many things to love. The love for a husband or a wife. A boyfriend, a girlfriend. The love for children, the love for yourself, and even material things. This is my love, it is mine and it fills me and it defines me and it compels me on.”
I’m back home high
on a roof
top
with Leo on one of those magical
MILITARY BASES TO START BUILDING TENTS TO HOUSE MIGRANT FAMILIES
“I can’t wait until yr a high school English teacher with an Audre Lorde construction paper quote on the wall” He passes me the spliff
“Leo, are we just Sally Bowlesing this shit right now?”
It’s one of those magical
spring early sherbet skies where the city warps forward
into its summer self before dipping
back
down
into the lows tomorrow
and I’m recounting the dude
at the governors corner guest cottages
who hocked spit on me balls deep
before I kicked him out kicking and screaming
and Leo turns to me half lidded saying, “this should have been the plot of the Lion King”
Iron rattling rattles our laughing as we both turn toward the rattling ladder hoops and Wilkes pops her head up. She jaunts over to us on the blue flowered bedsheet spread out with chips and guac and cucumber sandwiches and pulls tall cans of rosé out of her tote bag, handing us each one. “You better kick with that shit.” She reaches out to me and I hand her the spliff.
We’re listening
to this Neil deGrasse Tyson podcast where they talk
about the God Gene something cellular that makes us look up
and beyond and wonder at our creator
and Stephen Hawking talks
religion and science, saying they both articulate
the nature of who
we are, where we came from and why
and that though science produces more consistent
results, people will always choose religion
because it makes them feel less
alone
alone
and the debate turns to whether we’re alone in the cosmos and by then
the edible is hitting like a gif of Daffy Duck in pjs pounding his butt
against a wall so I’m thinking about the words “cosmos” and “cosmetic”
derivative of the Greek kósmos meaning order, arrangement
and the guest hopes we’re alone because if not? If we encounter
another alien civilization they would likely be faaaaaaaar
more technologically advanced than us, “and look,” she says
“how that worked out for the Native Americans”
Imagine you are a circuit.
Imagine whirring electricity.
Imagine being fed, and feeding.
Imagine getting what you need.
Imagine the fire inside you.
Imagine heat.
I don’t have much of anything figured out, but I do know to be indigenous is not to be a miracle of circumstance but to be the golden light of relentless cunning.
Leo: Right now is forever, for now
he says exhaling & that thought will be deep for approximately three more hours.
Me: Honestly, I can’t stare into the sky for too long without feeling like I’m about to lose my mind . . . the only living planet in a whole cold universe.
Wilkes practically stubs out her sub sandwich instead of the smoke.
Wilkes: Again with this shit? Nothing about our evolution strikes me as predetermined. Come on. I feel with all this exoplanet SETI bullshit you keep talking about, we’re ringing the universe’s doorbell with our Jehovah’s Witness pamphlets and lots of societies and worlds and shit are pretending not to be home. Why would an intelligent society welcome contact with us? Particularly if they’re in any way familiar with our work?
She turns to me, her eyebrows saying, “where’s the lie?”
Me: It’s not a grief! That we’re alone makes me treasure life that mu
ch more. This is our one and only Earth. These are our finite lives. You are my friends. The idea of us being alone makes me want to hold on to life, hold on to you that much more but not the choking kind.
Wilkes and Leo are silent a few seconds before looking at each other and snorting laughter.
Leo: Wow, that shit hit you pretty hard huh?
Wilkes: High Teebs is a corny, bold, sensual Teebs
Leo: One time when we were dating—
Tommy: OKAY, this hang out is officially over this is where you pack in your snacks and get the fuck off of my roof you bullies
Wilkes relents in a way where she really doesn’t. Nobody is going anywhere.
Let go
of the overgrowth, the unhealthy attachment
to attachment
for the sake of attachment
Imagine letting loose
the expectation to keep white
shoes radiation
The grace
of the dusty rocking chair in the mind The crescendo
moves on into the
denouement
We’re nearing the base
of the mountain, the end
of the walk and I think
can art also be the God Gene? The art
gene because what is writing
but convening with the perception of a higher power but a Sunday but a worship
Alone in the presence
All those disgusting people in the Myspace
days with the profile headline MUSIC
IS MY BOYFRIEND
Yes I’m mewing
into the void and yes
I’m completely
alone
Nations are always outlived by their cities
and Yes, there is utility
in this loneliness This is how I be with
You, dear reader, on the other
side of my words on the other side
of my worship
on the other side of my shiver winter
hearing my prayer Cupped
in covers
like a pair of hands
A communion wafer in my yellow heart
The father the son and the biblical three-way
Smith & Wesson math lesson XO message in a bottle of wild turkey
As their eyes
were watching
Beyoncé
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to give a big shout out to Friends of the High Line, Poets House, Vignettes gallery, and Gramma Poetry (RIP), without whom this book might never have been written. In spring 2017 Friends of the High Line (with a nudge from Poets House) and Vignettes + Gramma separately but simultaneously commissioned me to write and perform two audio installations that became the skeletal structure of this book. “FEED: A Garden Soundscape” was commissioned as part of the High Line’s spring ephemerals launch, and “iLone” was commissioned as part of Vignettes + Gramma’s dual-sponsored immersive Seattle city-wide art event “A Lone.” Thank you Solana Chehtman, Maya Shugart, Andi Pettis, Erin Eck, Paolo Javier, Drew Scott Swenhaugen, Sierra Stinson, Colleen Louise Barry, and Aidan Fitzgerald for the guidance, support, and opportunity.
Another big part of this project was cooking in people’s kitchens with them and listening to their food stories and food histories and projecting their food futures. Thank you Diego Medina, Jess Paps, Cal Peternell, Kristina Loring, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Liz Hirsch, Roy Pérez, Cat Glennon, Niqui Carter, Kim Selling, Joseph Osmundson, Willie Fitzgerald, Colin Winnette, Alex Zargoza, Chantal Johnson, and Becky Garcia for letting me dice it up with you.
Thanks of course to my mother for gifting me with her stories. It’s weird to think about or whatever but mothers are the first things we consume lolsob. One final thanks to the Whiting Foundation, whose financial support gave me the time to finish this book.
TOMMY “TEEBS” PICO is the author of the books IRL, winner of the 2017 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize and a finalist for the 2018 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, Nature Poem, winner of a 2018 American Book Award and a finalist for the 2018 Lambda Literary Award, and Junk, a finalist for the 2019 Lambda Literary Award. He was the founder and editor in chief of birdsong, an anti-racist/queer-positive collective, small press, and zine that published art and writing from 2008–2013. He was a Queer|Art|Mentorship inaugural fellow, a 2013 Lambda Literary Fellow in Poetry, a 2017 NYSCA/NYFA Fellow in Poetry, and was awarded the 2017 Friends of Literature prize from the Poetry Foundation and a 2018 Whiting Award. Originally from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation, he now splits his time between Los Angeles and Brooklyn. He co-curates the reading series Poets With Attitude (PWA) with Morgan Parker at the Ace Hotel, co-hosts the podcasts Food 4 Thot and Scream, Queen! and is a contributing editor at Literary Hub.
@heyteebs
Copyright © 2019 Tommy Pico
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, contact Tin House Books, 2617 NW Thurman St., Portland, OR 97210.
Published by Tin House Books, Portland, Oregon
Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data TK
Names: Pico, Tommy, author.
Title: Feed / Tommy Pico.
Description: First U.S. edition. | Portland, OR : Tin House Books, 2019.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019013806| ISBN 9781947793576 (paperback) | ISBN 9781947793583 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PS3616.I288 F44 2019 | DDC 811/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019013806
First U.S. Edition 2019
Cover Art © Cat Glennon
Cover Design: Cat Glennon & Jakob Vala
Interior design by Jakob Vala
www.tinhouse.com