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IRL

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About this listen

IRL is a sweaty summertime poem composed like a long text message, rooted in the epic tradition of A.R. Ammons, ancient Kumeyaay Bird Songs, and Beyoncé’s visual albums. It follows Teebs, a reservation-born, queer NDN weirdo, trying to figure out his impulses/desires/history in the midst of Brooklyn rooftops, privacy in the age of the Internet, street harassment, suicide, boys boys boys, literature, colonialism, religion, leaving one's 20s, and a love/hate relationship with English. He’s plagued by an indecision, unsure of which obsessions, attractions, and impulses are essentially his, and which are the result of Christian conversion, hetero-patriarchal/colonialist white supremacy, homophobia, Bacardi, gummy candy, and not getting laid.

IRL asks, what happens to a modern, queer indigenous person a few generations after his ancestors were alienated from their language, their religion, and their history? Teebs feels compelled towards “boys, burgers, booze”, though he begins to suspect there is perhaps a more ancient goddess calling to him behind art, behind music, behind poetry.

©2016 Birds, LLC (P)2018 Birds, LLC Literature & Fiction LGBTQIA+
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Tommy's first in a line of now four epic poems. A book that is definitely worth your attention. The writing is at times times hyper-lucid, crisp, incisive and insightful. At other moments rushed, harried, scattershot, incoherent, tonally/linguistically jarring. The writing is more consistent and coherent than it isn't, but is somewhat hampered by Tommy's performance, which again, is still finding it's feet in this format.

At times full of personality, at times he throws away his lines, leaves no breath, catapults you between ideas and moments that require more time to digest. One might argue that this is Tommy's intention - but given what is happening textually in these moments, I would argue not, as it does not serve to build an atmosphere that props up textual happenings like, say, Whitelaw's performance of Not I.

A text that is perhaps better read than listened to, based on this recording.

The story is fly-on-the-wall exploration of the intersection between queerness and Tommy's identity as a native american from the kumeyaay nation. The parallel is important and interesting. The way this intersection plays out in Tommy's psychology is central to the text and for sure something that could be revisited.

Give it a listen.

Flawed but Special

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