Tommy Pico
Three Poems
From Nature Poem
When James hugs me hello
he stoops
(bc he is very tall)
nuzzles his forehead into the hook
of my neck
takes a big, long sniff
growls soft and low.
James is a stone
cold
dummy. But when he does that?
If this was an 80's hair band music video
I wd totally groupie
toss my frillies onto the stage of James.
From Nature Poem
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 borne
of the desire to communicate, can I really be blamed when Money says anxi-
ety is only real when the face breaks and I'm chipping like paint?
From Nature Poem
I have chosen—you have chosen—he or she had chosen—we have chosen—
they have chosen
whose origin word, ceosan, meant something more like to taste or to try,
"only remotely related to choice"
an illusion of capitalism, like control
Ppl often look unfazed by Kenyan university massacres and the onslaught of
James Franco. Behavior is mutable. Mirrors love attention.
Like everyone,
I read a Choose Yr Own Adventure w/my fingers keepin tabs on various
forks in the text, to backtrack when reachin a dead end
How often to you choose hunger, or cheese burger? A space in btwn is hard
to see when you're all borderlands—
We're on the rooftop of the Wythe Hotel. It suggests exposure. It shoots up
like teeth, the cool breeze sobering like a newly sober ex
turning softly into peaches from the light behind the bottles
He cups my neck (you hate all his friends) The hairs on his face like an
English garden (his sister's a racist) Taller than I remembered (he played you
like a dolly then tossed you aside c'mon TEEBS)
carrying
the past in oneself, like a word