PositiveLos Angeles Review of BooksFeed’s themes will be familiar to any reader of Pico’s work: love, written self-expression, and the search for a self and community in the midst of a world hostile to queer and indigenous people ... Once again, we join Teebs’s group text, ready for his delightful, intimate ride. But something both subtle and substantial changes in Feed, in which the gambit of the previous book-length poems starts to stretch thin. It starts when Teebs breaks the proverbial fourth wall ... finding a dramatic energy in the address and its intimacy ... As the poem’s direct addresses accumulate, they illustrate personal barriers to forging the very community Teebs seeks. The poem starts to wonder if a persona like Teebs can act as an emotional crutch. That is perhaps what is most radical about Feed: how Pico questions the very existence of his alter ego, Teebs ... As the capstone in the Teebs tetralogy, Feed is both a meditation on community and a farewell ... By letting go of Teebs, Pico finds success in at least part of that project. He also makes room for an evolving voice that will tackle novel challenges ... What that other side looks like, the voice in Feed doesn’t necessarily know. But in discovering what needs to be left behind, Pico claims space for himself to grow — as a lover, a friend, a community member, and a writer. While Feed is a valediction to one poetic project, it also suggests that Pico’s next endeavor might even transcend his work’s existing vigor.
