by Tommy Pico
the box back in my backpack before he gets back NBD crisis
averted earth
a golden orbit of simplicity.
My primary device is personification, says Nature. Do your associations consider my mercurial elements?
Nature is kind of over my head
the speech sweeps inland is overtaking
Nature keeps wanting to hang out, and I’ve been looking for an excuse to use the phrase “hackles of the night” but you can’t always get what you want.
Every date feels like the final date bc we always find small ways of being extremely rude to each other, like mosquito bites or deforestation
like I think I’m in an abusive relationship w/nature
then again I think I’m in an abusive relationship w/myself, I whisper after pinching my squishy belly
but for reals I leave yr apt in the early train of my hangover thinking that was a weird bump like all jostled but back on the open road
then like clockwork u txt two days later sayin, greetings from the Pines—you free Tuesday night?
and I’m both charmed and suspicious, which is probably redundant, and also the soil of my landscape and a landing strip.
I don’t like thinking abt nature bc nature makes me suspect there is a god.
Monumental bowl of ash overtaking hikers, for example—the cloud’s arms sweep down the mountainside
a gasp from the mouth of natural wonder, eyes peel toward the sky
like memory
Agreed. A greed. Aahhh. Greed.
God wants everything, n I’m like God—you, I’m sorry, but you are too much of a time commitment. I have a work thing. It’s not you, it’s me.
God is wearing short shorts and demands worship, n I’m like God, yr balls are showing!!!
I’m trying to explain this very slowly.
My friend Jesus works at a dispensary. In the waiting room, they have one of those ball lightning things. Plasma globe. Makes everyone feel like Storm. Whatever keeps stoners staring
is the only kind of nature I could bear.
We are the last animal to arrive in the kingdom—even science will tell you that.
My father takes me into the hills we cut sage. He tells me to thank the plant for its sacrifice, son. Every time I free a switch of it a burst of prayer for every leaf.
I’m swoll on knowing this? Sharing the pride of plants
My mother waves at oak trees. A doctor delivers her diagnosis.
When she ascends the mountains to pick acorn, my mother motherfucking waves at oak trees. Watching her stand there, her hands behind her back, rocking, grinning
into the face of the bark—
They are talking to each other.
I am nothing like that, I say to my audience.
I say, I went to Sarah Lawrence College
I make quinoa n shit
Once on campus I see a York Peppermint Pattie wrapper on the ground, pick it up, and throw it away. Yr such a good Indian says some dick walking to class. So,
I no longer pick up trash.
I want to be the one who eats the candy
at the Felix Gonzalez-Torres exhibit, not the one splashing his face with cold water in the bathroom
but we r who we r
like jambalaya.
Let’s say I was raised on television and sugar and exhausted parents working every job that poked its head from the tall grasses of opportunity
who didn’t go to college but still read poetry to each other and wrote songs and made sculptures and read law documents at the beach while I threw like seaweed on my cousins
but opportunity to what?
My current envy list includes ppl who make decisions, in general. Envy is a shit tit. I meet a boy and I miss him. Time, a paragon of confidence, taps me on the shoulder and asks
if I get legit anxiety when someone calls from a number I don’t know, cos it’s like—who still calls?
I’ve always wanted to know, I say, why they call you Father
You can’t reflect and decide at the same time. If language is a structure born of the desire to communicate, can I really be blamed when Money says anxiety is only real when the face breaks and I’m chipping like paint?
I shoot thru yr stupid sky like a stupid sky
You are like the third convertible in a row or like seafoam socks in the fat far rockaways
I can’t look you in the eye and listen
at the same time. Yr not stupid at all, you say things like “the skin of art,” but here with me in the back of this margarita—you must be very, very stupid
Ppl here wear stupid shirts that button all the way up to the top of the tower, and inevitably fall
I look too much into the mirror of my worst self
so life feels like always breakin in a pair of new shoes
and my hunch is we’ll be naked soon having sex like those handsoaps that smell like parsley sort of refreshing but chemical Nothing like the real thing n you wd prolly notice if we fucked with all my clothes on bc yr of course so hazel
and stupid.
Nothing can fall that wasn’t built
except maybe my self-esteem bc I have a hunch that I was born with it intact but then America came smacked
me across the face said like it
n the sick thing is getting smacked across the face makes me so wet rn
and that’s prolly why poetry, bc in order to get inside
a poem has to break you
the way the only thing more obvious than your body
is leaving yr shirt on in the pool.
The perigee moon haloes the white comforter in a Beyoncé way.
You shine like a bar of soap in the shadows.
The perigee moon is above both of us, in Portland, in NYC, in San Diego, in Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi, Guaynabo, Sri Lanka
Knowing the moon is inescapable tonight
and the tuft of yr chest against my shoulder blades—
This is a kind of nature I would write a poem about.
Everyone is looking for their stupid soulmate rn
Sade likens dating to war, says she’s on the front lines
which is also a kind of hunger. Really, I just see teeth
or a desert—u know yr thirsty
when you wonder does the bartender think I’m cute, or is he tryin to get a tip?
but that’s the wilds for you.
Everyone wants to know where can they meet a good guy
then wants to go to a gay bar on Saturday night.
I’m cool with contradictions, but don’t lie to yrself—
Hope
is a charred skeleton
of a house visible from a road that snakes
through the valley of memory
where fig trees burst from the ground like throaty laughter.
Winter, like thirst, is one of nature’s ultimate burns
implicit in which is the analogy of touching a hot stovetop.
I’m tired of astrology and bffs
saying Find the spring
bc spring is an asshole, getting yr hopes n temps up then plunging like self-esteem. Plus it’s nearly half-terrifying to show again the sea of my body
and yet
I like the way my head shivers
restin on yr stomach when you say If I keep hanging out w/u I’m gonna get a six pack
from laughing.
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 foot race 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.
the fabric of our lives #death
some ppl wait a lifetime for a moment like this #death
reach out and touch someone #death
he kindly stopped for me #death
kid-tested, mother-approved #death
oops, I did it again #death
it keeps going, and going, and going #death
I’m lovin it #death
because you’re worth it #death
the best a man can get #death
maybe she’s born with it #death
a whole new world #death
high, flying, adored #death
be all that you can be #death
It’s . . . Alive!!! #death
the freshmaker #death
stick a fork in me #death
when you’ve got it, flaunt it #death
why you gotta be so rude #death
the best part of wakin up #death
it’s morphin time #death
hello, is it me you’re looking for? #death
just do it #death
Got #death
he can get it #death
what’s the 411, son #death
takes a lickin and keeps on tickin #death
hang in there, baby #death
mr. big stuff, who do you think you are #death
solid as a rock #death
all day, every day #death
rude boy #death
yr givin me fever #death
that’s the way love goes #death
almost doesn’t count #death
hosted by Neil Patrick Harris #death
yr not the boss of me #death
clever girl #death
o say can u see #death
shots shots shots shots shots shots #death
AngelNafis: ‘Do Right Woman’ is literally a church pew. #Aretha
heyteebs: I can’t even hear the first three notes of that intro w/o getting misty
AngelNafis: it’s basically mathematics. Aretha plus a person having any sliver of a soul whatsoever equalz holy-feelz.
heyteebs: gaia is alive in those pipes
AngelNafis: LOL listening now im almost stressed out by what an opposite of an alien she is. not from outerspace but rather, THE CORE OF EARTH
heyteebs: can I reproduce this twitter convo in nature poem plz
AngelNafis: only if u eulogize me when I DIE SHORTLY AFTER
heyteebs: Don’t Play That Song 70s TV version is basically an argument for thermodynamics
AngelNafis: ‘Call Me’ is to be played at my funeral/graduation/birthday cake cutting ritual/baptism/when i walk down the aisle
AngelNafis: listening to it right now and am more river than a river
heyteebs: omg this is a song abt friendship all the YOUs, but cd also b a polyamorous anthem?
AngelNafis: the thought of a polyamorous anthem EXHAUSTS me. FRANDS it has to be.
heyteebs: Do Right Truth
if the spark is elemental
if the phase changes
the first thing we noticed was your eyes your big eyes looking right at us
if infusing the valley with yrself
if light is over
whelming
if a crumple of heavy human in the careful hair
the birds I forgot abt the birds says auntie out from lockup
if vapor
if the carapace
the universe whirs its ghost of TV snow
if I pick my nose
if I see a flannel
if I was your girl
all the things I’d do to you
I’m going to be so sad when Aretha Franklin dies.
Stars are characters
in the tome of the night sky, which I shd work more at deciphering but no
I’ll just sit here and think abt the sequel to A Beautiful Mind I just invented called A Ugly Bag
and literally can’t stop giggling to myself in the cool quiet office like it’s bad like it’s a high school math test someone farted situation
Tracing shapes in the stars is the closest I get to calling a language mine:
The Ripening Mango. Three Snaps in a Z Formation. Amy Winehouse.
Naming is basic and audacious, a claim
My ideal power-couple name is TomCula bc I’m pretty sure that ancient horror faggot could get it, plus I’m into upward mobility, know my way around caskets, and wd love to mist myself thru doors
I sit in the cool quiet office and invent myself some laughs in an attempt to maneuver from a sticky kind of ancestral sadness, bein a NDN person in occupied America, and the magic often works
until I think why is it so damn hard to spell maneuver and why does it always look wrong my great grandparents had almost no contact
with white ppl like the shutter of a poem is the only place where I can illusion myself some authority
Everyone remembers the weather when discovering a body.
I think it’s perfectly natural to look skyward.
Body
All of yr flecks, flakes n gurgles? Ew.
I sweat. I tell myself it’s just what bodies do.
I have chicken fingers for breakfast.
My cousins have cirrhosis.
Body
I am not my body. Get me out of here.
When you grow up around funerals, you learn pretty quick a body in a casket is bloated but somehow still sunk—A waxy calm. Where was the person who’d gone
My family was like a reservation Six Feet Under—parents sang the old Spanish songs, Kumeyaay birdsongs, church songs, led prayers at every NDN funeral from here to Yuma. Gila Bend. Tucson. “Funeral” was the first game my brother played. I’d turn to my cousins wonder which of us wd make it to old age.
Watch him take their feelings, said mom in the hospital waiting room as my father held hands with the weeping family. He slowly bent into the grief above them, spoke on the dead and began weeping, too. Now watch, she said, how relieved the room gets.
Even some jokes? He stays heavy tho
Her voice, a sail in the darkness.
Revulsion, I thought, was abt self-esteem but now I think might be a warning.
Solution to the problem of having a body.
Body: don’t get too attached to me
Science predicts we’ll discover alien life by 2025
Dudes’ legs on the subway are constantly spreading
Nature asks aren’t I curious abt the landscapes of exoplanets—which, I thought we all understood planets are metaphors
like the Vikings, or Delaware
The night sky yawns over the city, indistinct
but for the spell
Miss Night Sky of my childhood was darkest toward the desert, where her features chill and sparkle and swoon with metal
lighting up the dark universe
I wanted to stop looking up and start marching forward
like a metaphor
NDN teens have the highest rate of suicide of any population group in America. A white man can massacre 9 black ppl in a church and be fed Burger King by the cops afterward. A presidential candidate gains a platform by saying Mexican immigrants are murderers and rapists
It’s hard for me to imagine curiosity as any
thing more than a pretext for colonialism
so nah, Nature I don’t want to know the colonial legacy of the future.