Tommy “Teebs” Pico is the author of IRL (Birds, LLC, 2016), Nature Poem (forthcoming 2017 from Tin House Books), and the zine series Hey, Teebs. He was a Queer/Art/Mentors inaugural fellow, 2013 Lambda Literary fellow in poetry, 2016 Tin House summer poetry scholar, and has poems in BOMB, Guernica, and The Offing. Originally from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation, he now lives in Brooklyn and co-curates the reading series Poets With Attitude (PWA) with Morgan Parker. @heyteebs
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from Junk
The sky in snowflakes humping a big turquoise Eames chair on the
street The featureless upper East side The hard up city El Niño year
had me thinkin snow might not even happen If Junk is the space in-
between utility: the poet in writer’s block And somehow the Junk,
aka History, aka Snow keeps piling up The kitchen junk the closet
junk The shoes I always mean to resole Too often impaled by the
reflex to ascribe meaning onto things Movie stub for example Some
things reach w/o trying, like a bartender with dimples So what to
you do? Is a thing ppl ask at parties n bars n the morning after red
light bar nights in New York Sometimes I hear my voice back and
wonder if I even went thru puberty Junk is a come up for ppl treated
like garbage of the state More mass shootings this year than there
are days in a year Men in Texas surround a mosque I can’t remember
the last time I was so skittish Except when I saw that drone in the
city The eerie sputter of the world shifting Or just about anytime
I use the toaster Blimpy eyes trained on the bread slits Possessions
possess Winter is a season of accumulation I have layers, like an
onion is the stupidest online dating profile “about me” I’ve read
in a minute Men are a waste of attention You can lead a man to
Beyoncé, but you can’t make him think Let’s get anti-romantic
Let’s get disgusting My kink is holding hands on the way to the deli
I hate musicals so gd much Not every revelation deserves a stanza,
dummy The hope is unity The reality a bit more sand papery
Refurbish The hands are welding torches The clear tube-light the
torch smirks outward The cutting edge The tink tink of paper clips
A clear pink plastic swordfish tiki drink stirrer America is all action,
no memory Me, mostly memory and laughing at the phrase “dog
pornographer” America wants its NDNs weary, slumped over the
broken horse, spear sliding into the dry grass But I’m giving u NDN
joy NDN laughter NDN freedom My body was built for singing The
notes drive my mottled sky Catch them one by one Trill at will
Wizard the A’s and D’s C’s and such in piles on the staff, clef, etc
I’m worried self-love will make me lazy No dummy, it’s yr natural
state The Kumeyaay custom of burning the dead’s possessions,
ascending the objects to heaven, was a lot simpler when every-
thing was organic Junk flushed w/o the spirit infuser A note isn’t
useful until you sing it Store them in yr ear Didn’t quite hit the
note That wasn’t such a good time I’m a tenant of suspicion Did u
know in Chile, “Pico” is slang for penis? I’d always just thought of
beaks like in pico de gallo but a pecker’s a pecker And then that
fabulous round thing, “language,” taps me on the back and I fall
over A.R. Ammons is like, I have this feeling to write a poem but
it was a boner Oppression is the wages of comfort We walk down
14th street and you see 14th street but I see a massacre Lenape land
An unfortunate side effect of living is the world doesn’t care What
a way to stay stoked: Pepper objects with life and hold on To ascribe
victimhood to Junk is to miss the point completely There’s a calm
outside the anxiety of utility There’s a freedom from use for the
sake of use An affection for just being, a new kind of worth outside
of the object Perhaps I’ve lost my grip I saw my ex or like the body
of him not the face Or, the hairline not the pomade The shoulders
but not the cape But for a couple mean seconds they shared the
same space I froze n literally buckled It’s never just abt the night
in question My body holding onto you despite myself or bc of it