You always complained of migraines. Now, I’m trying to decided if I’m sorry for not having sympathy for you.

Nicki Minaj just said, “all my independent women make some noise.”
I didn’t know if she meant me.

Caitlyn, let me take that hair / in my own hands and curl it down your back.

"The damage isn't that bad, not yet." 

The Dinosaur of Wyoming

I was never born a hermaphrodite. But I tell this story where I am born a hermaphrodite. And anyone listening after I get to the part when the gynecologist asks if

"My record does not contain the helicopter dream I’ve been having for ten years/where I’m an actor paid by the government to fake a zombie epidemic."

Untitled One

Motherhood slept astonished as astronomers wept so-so-ago with this sort of blow. This sort of ovary, yo, the story being if thrown into something sombrous, spokes-of-light, it

But I think of you this way anyway, your bright corona blinding my eyes. 

When you leave the comment that I am "such a good mom"
under a picture I have posted of my child online,
it freaks me out.
You haven't seen me in over twenty years,
and have never met

I know you toss out untouched leftovers, and miss them.

Places that will not want
You, strike hooves below the earth.
Fur-breathed, and winter friendly—

Cider and hot baths,
Like consolation, cool
Off fast. Why, Kafka,

Have I had

1.         board the T heading downtown to get to the swan pond / check your phone absently / remember
            how so many people needed your attention last month that it made you want to

I am remembering it wrong but do not care.

Kentucky Swami

(For Tim Skeen)

                         "Poetry / makes nothing happen" –Auden

                        "yet men die miserably every day / 
                        for

When we consume ourselves, of course / we think no one cares enough to watch.

Forgetfulness

The presenter pronounces "vista" as VEE-sta.
And that's all I really remember.

Logic Models

This is my logic model for love (just keep moving).
This is my logic

Baseball Players I Remember (I Watched Baseball 1-4 Years as a Child. I Collected Cards. My Favorite Team Was The Braves)

Ron Gant. I remember he bent his knees
in a weird, intriguing way

I’m not one of those guys who watches the ball launch
off the bat into the right field seats.

I trace the windup with my elbow, my arm like a wing
unfurling, red lace licking off my feathertips.

By the seventh stretch
We gave up.

Punching our gloves as the sun raced toward dinner, 
we sorted into teams and agreed on the rules
in a minute or less.

I miss the moment his bat cracks the ball.

We’re speaking of salvation, god damn it,
And only the incurious break slumps.

Tommy “Teebs” Pico was a Queer/Art/Mentors inaugural fellow, 2013 Lambda Literary fellow in poetry, and has poems in BOMB, Guernica, and [PANK]. Originally from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation, he now lives in Brooklyn and curates the reading series Poets With Attitude (PWA) with Morgan Parker. @heyteebs