Tommy Pico, IRL

Regret is a gift

that keeps on giving I

think it was Sontag

or Sonic the Hedgehog

who said just dash dodge

weave faster than you

can think n there’s no

time to shame spiral

Crushing

on Muse—whose

even slight squint bursts

me into high July—

while dialing,

essentially, a trick.

This is my argument:

Muse crashes into

the edges of my nights,

isn’t crushing,

doesn’t love me,

doesn’t have his shit

together (tho neither,

frankly, do I) but yanks

me n my hand onto the dance

floor til tilt-a-whirl Goes on

like land, just accum-

ulating in my eyes.

“[A] sweaty, summertime poem composed like a long text message” is how the back cover describes Brooklyn, New York poet and editor Tommy Pico’s first full-length poetry title, IRL (Birds, LLC, 2016). There is something very clear in the text as to why Pico was named by Flavorwire as one of their “50 Writers You Need to See Read Live,” a kind of breathless, insistent energy and rush, demanding every bit of your attention. Composed closer to the staccato-shorthand of text messaging than the lyric, Pico’s IRL is lively, pulsing and sassy, writing out a long poem that speaks of history and language, pop culture idols and icons, and a heritage that includes his rhetorical declaration, spawned from, it would seem, his background as a member of the Kumeyaay nation: “I survive seven generations / into a post-apocalyptic America / that started 1492. Maybe / you’ll live too?” Pico’s book-length poem reads as incredible immediate, seemingly composed via texts from his (ie: the narrator’s) shared apartment, writing out everything and anything, a busy chatter quickly turning from the seemingly mundane to an almost divine clarity and back in a blink, writing: “America / reclines undying I want America / to know who is still dying / for its sins. I want America taken / alive w/ all my names. I have cocks / in my eyes and songs / in my stars and so Yeah, / I fucking hate you / for wanting to die. / And hate myself  for thinking / it might be for the best.” This is a rich and confident text by a poet worth paying attention to; his writing demands it.

Boundaries

aren’t cages. Meter

is a fine flute.

But maybe nobody wants

to hear you. Maybe

you are just an asshole.