So quick story before I do the introduction.
So before-- this is my first reading here
with the Poetry Center.
Yeah, it's awesome.
It's awesome.
Love it here.
But one of the things is we were trying
to calculate how many chairs to use,
and I was like, oh, definitely not more than 100.
And I think I owe Patri, informally, some baked cookies.
Because you guys really did come out and support.
And I can't blame you, because Tommy Pico and Morgan
Parker are amazing.
I'm so happy to know them even outside of our poetry work.
And here's a little bit more about them.
Tommy Pico is originally from the Viejas Indian reservation.
He recently moved to LA and he lives near Morgan Parker,
who is also in LA.
Tommy is the author of IRL, Nature Poem, and Junk.
He co-curates the reading series, Poets With Attitude
with Morgan, co-hosts the podcast Food for Thought,
and is a contributing editor at Literary Hub.
He's a 2018 Whiting fellow.
A line from one of Tommy's books.
"The office of my hummingbird heart
rattles the sparkling office."
On the page and in person, Tommy and Morgan
really matter to poetry, because they
expand the boundaries of what it means
to speak about identity through their poetry.
They are fearless, and they exalt language
in a way that makes me think about the future,
it makes me think about now, and it also
makes me think about what is possible.
So without further ado, I'd like to introduce Tommy Pico.