From Tommy Pico’s Book-Length Poem, IRL

Tommy Pico’s IRL is a sweaty, summertime poem composed like a long text message, rooted in the epic tradition of A.R. Ammons, ancient Kumeyaay Bird Songs, and Beyoncé’s self-titled album. IRL asks what happens to a modern, queer indigenous person a few generations after his ancestors were alienated from their language, their religion, and their history… The following is excerpted from IRL, available now from Bird LLC.

I have a problem
opening my mouth
all the way. The full & res-
onant tone can’t escape
until you’ve opened up
a little bit more. Try yawning.
My singin teacher asks
do I have TMJ. No, Pam I say.
I have an athletic mind
with a crushing dominion
over my body NBD Ppl love casting
pathologies. I sing super
high That’s crazy she says,
U were castrati in another
life No, Pam. In another life
I have hundreds
of horses, ferry Kumeyaay
children to school, men
and women to fiestas
btwn reservations Weave
dry leaves n reeds
n branches into baskets
Loop darker strips into
lightning bolts n the cloud
patterns that roll around
our sacred mountain I live
in the Valley of the Captains
sing Bird, the epic song cycles
that narrate how we got
to the valley and what we passed
on our way Time to time I scout
from the mountain peak, light a fire
in my feet when the Spanish
flood into the vineyards
We retreat into the crevice
of the Earth but the storm,
it never blows
over. At the mission,
I learn to read Grow
food for the priest
Scrub our shackles
for the bible tells me so.
I’ve never liked church, but I love
midnight mass, love singing lessons
after 8pm, love night writing.
The ceremony of nighttime,
the cauldron of echoes, smells,
the Earth’s shadow over itself—
curates an intimate thought
process, a witchy kind
of attention. The sun is
too canine for me. Drooling
and jumping and expects thanks
for just being. Too much into everything.
I look up at blinking string lights
crisscrossing the sky wtf r u DOING
with yr life? Less
Mary Oliver and more Mary
Magdalene, in that language
is a garden tended by succeeding
generations Flowers watered,
weeds pulled But words
change n rules change How
“hate” was pronounced more
like “hot” Really seething
I mean seeing something adds
to its poetry Then conquerors
invade the narrative n just mow
the whole thing My colonial mind
So that I’m at this party shoutin
over (ugh) dub step abt Mary
Magdalene n historical
revisionism I heard on this
comedy podcast instead of the
changing nature of Frog
in Kumeyaay trickster stories
bc they’re gone n I never learned
them Mary in the sense that
u live yr life n after u die, writing
lives on—says whatever
it wants about you. Like
leaving a party alone and
catching the train n rem-
ember every dumb ass thing
u said?
Everyone hates you.
They could help it, but
you can’t. You keep shitting.
I look up and fall down
bc the distance btwn Bushwick
and the north star smacks
my equilibrium across the face.
Ppl survive all the time,
thru true horrors Holocaust,
Middle Passage, 1492 like how?
I am one of the weak ones.
I cry at Beyoncé songs.
I see a young mom drunk
on the subway Throw up
blueberries or black beans
n her kid son holds her hand,
waves away strap-hangers,
forgets his happy birthday
candle on the seat The doors
close at their stop I cry
for a straight week. The seam
of my skin bursts open
routinely. It’s a condition. In
the valley I lived in for
thousands of years, in trad-
itional times, I’m sure I would
have been a mourner, called
on to cry bc I do it all the time.
So I sit on the leg
of my don’t write it soul
for hours to feel nothing.
Do we deserve privacy
in the age of selfies—pardon
if I don’t say it muse for
a moment—if we’re just giving
it all away? Redacted,
delete status, unlike—Yes,
you always deserve privacy.
In fact, I think you should
have more. Stop fucking
posting about “veggies,” truly
America’s most disgustingly
perky word, and pics of yr shitty
jewelry tree Just bc you bought
it online one time when u had
a vodka soda with yr Ambien
doesn’t mean I want to see it.
Everything is so extra,
it gets hard
to know what to actually
give a fuck about.
It’s okay to be alone vs I’m
gonna die alone Is Muse good or
bad, is the needless dichotomy
of a foster God—it’s hard
to dislodge him, n scraping
away the remnants (they
haven’t all winded
or rained away) takes
work—theistic fate jammed
up in my crannies, literal church
imposed onto the foothills
of my landscape whispering
I know most of you didn’t make
it, but it’s all a part of God’s
plan. I whisper to myself
Is Muse good or bad? Thinkin
in this way makes me
pardon the expression
want to kill myself. Good/Bad,
Right/Wrong, Binary is
another weapon of the
oppressor Justifies conquest
And is a method to ensure
survivors, if there are any, will
always question their worth
to literally just live.
Today I am smiling
with the great poets
and tomorrow I cry
in line at the bank. Grindr:
Hey man, what’s good?
I don’t fuckin know. Some
thoughts are all you.

Excerpted from IRL, available from Birds LLC.