Nature Poem by Tommy Pico

Author Bio:
Tommy “Teebs” Pico is a queer, indigenous poet, podcaster, and tv writer. Originating
from the Kumeyaay nation’s Viejas Indian reservation and transplanted into the Los Angeles
and Brooklyn scenes, Pico brings his unique experiences and views of nature and humanity
together within his creative works. Part stream-of-consciousness, part hecticly living-life-to-the-
fullest, Pico’s writing will run off without you if you don’t keep up - just like life. (Pico, “About”)

Description (queer ecopoetics)

Teebs refuses to write a nature poem. Everyone expects him to, of course, as the queer
NDN, but he won’t. Yet, in the fragmented poetry of Nature Poem, Teebs does, in his own sort
of way, write about nature. Yes, some of it is about stars - both the kind in the sky and the kind
in Hollywood, but a lot of it is about how we’re fucking up the earth and colonization and erasure
and those ugly parts of humanity. That’s nature, right?
Nature Poem speaks of queer ecopoetics using techniques such as fragmentation and
différance, alluding to the Earth and what we typically think of as nature, as well as highlighting
humanity’s non-central place within it. As a gay indigenous man exploring the cultural
borderlands between life on a reservation and life in the city, stuck between two cultures, two
sets of expectations, Teebs voices the life living between binaries - of living within borderlands -
and the need for diverse representation that this anthology hopes to represent.
Pull Quote:
“Facts are fallacies , created and curated by authority figures w/ /
agendas…. Facts are used to subjugate, intimidate, enslave, and /
kill entire “races” of people reproductive rights etc”
(Pico, Nature Poem, 49)

Sources:

Bio and picture :http://tommy-pico.com/about-1

Pico, Tommy. “About.” Tommy Pico, www.tommy-pico.com/about-1. Accessed

26 May 2021.

---. Nature Poem. 1st ed., Tin House Books, 2017.

Portrait of Tommy Pico. Tommy Pico, 26 May 2021. www.tommy-pico.com/about-1