Absent Mindr: A New Mind-bending Poetry App

Author: William Johnson

May 15, 2014

There are phone apps for finding love, scoring quick sexual hook-ups, and for recognizing the music and media playing around you. But what about an app to inject some much needed lyricism into your life? Poetry fans rejoice! There is now a mobile/tablet app to momentarily sate your appetite for some wonderfully turned-out poetry.

Poet and former Lambda Literary Foundation Emerging Writer fellow Tommy Pico has created a poetry chapbook app called Absent Mindr.

Absent Mindr by Tommy Pico is the first poetry chapbook APP for iOS mobile and tablet devices. The ch-app includes 24 poems, audio files of Pico reading each one, and art by Cat Glennon. Developed/published by VERBALVISUAL, Absent Mindr is available for download on the iTunes APP store.

The poems in Absent Mindr musically loop and knot through themes of love, family, pop divas, the body, and the voice itself–articulating a terrain of contemporary American Indian queer identity that extends from Pico’s roots on the Viejas Indian Reservation of the Kumeyaay Nation, into the hipster haven of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and out into cyberspace. Alternately tender, mocking, playful, serious, seductive, and vulnerable; the audio component of the app showcases Pico’s ability at adeptly switching registers. The work sparkles with wit and humor, balancing levity and depth, creating an exciting new voice in both the American Indian and queer literary traditions.

Absent Mindr is now live on the iTunes app store and is free to download for all Apple idevices. Click here to download.