Feed Read online

  “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