An Interview with Tommy Pico!
Today we are happy to share with our LGBTQIA GNC Two Spirit Fam an interview with poet Tommy Pico! (@heyteebs ) Pico is from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation and now resides in Brooklyn. And boy, is he busy in Brooklyn. Pico is he author of absentMINDR (the first chapbook APP published for iOS mobile/tablet devices) and the forthcoming book IRL. Pico is also the founder and editor in chief of birdsong, which is an antiracist/queer-positive collective, small press, and zine that publishes art and writing. He was a Queer/Art/Mentors inaugural fellow, and has poetry and readings in what seems like everywhere. We’re so glad Pico took the time to share some stories and thoughts with us!
photo credit to: Niqui Carter
1. How does your identity inform and not inform your poetry?
I think the “hand” of identity or whatever is more apparent in the narrative moments of my poems, so like telling a tree I wd slap it across the face or getting asked to give someone a blow job in a pizza parlor bathroom. But even the more abstract moments are I think shaped by curiosities and obsessions I have being this thing in my body. So I think identity wholly informs my work, at least rn.
2. What’s your favorite part of being queer?
Tote bags and singing XO at karaoke.
3. What’s your “dream” zine like if you had unlimited time and connections what would you make?
I’m so tired of these like gay male photo zines with white dicks on them and pics of like eating cereal out of clean cut teenage boys’ asses. I wd make a photo zine of queer weirdoes holding hands on the way to the deli.
4. What’s your favorite smell?
Baby oil, the boy I like, lavender, and watermelon gummy candies.
5. What do you wish you would see more of in movies?
Actual nuanced stories, not just special effects, that also include more than white straight men? I don’t think that’s asking too much, and yet.
6. What’s the scariest horror movie you’ve ever seen, and do you think you would ever want to be involved in directing a horror movie?
I just saw 10 Cloverfield Lane and that movie scared the living hell out of me, I literally had to sleep with a light on like a four-year-old. John Goodman plays this abusive, anti-social, violent, angry, sociopathic conspiracy theorist in a bunker that was way scarier than the prospect of aliens or chemical warfare. I don’t think I have the organization nor ability to delegate that’s required of a director.
7. What kind of art did you make as a kid?
I painted, I drew, I danced, I sang. Also in 5th grade I had a comics press called Tommi Gunn Comics, and I would have my cousins and friends draw comic strips for me and I would photocopy them into booklets and sell them at recess.
8. Do you have a favorite fact or tradition about the Kumeyaay nation?
Kumeyaay people are so freaking funny and tell such good stories. If I have any sense of humor at all, it’s on them.
9. What’s the last dream you had?
I was Sarah Silverman doing summersaults on like this long, gigantic hopscotch. It was weird.
10. What advice do you have for young, queer people trying to find strength and belief in their artistic voice?
Feeling anything other than worthy is a trick of colonialist, hetero-patriarchal white supremacy. Also, naps. Take naps whenever u gd please.
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