Cicero's stories, poetry, and essays have been published in magazines such as Scarecrow, Brittle Star, Retort, Nth Position, Black Ice, Identity Theory, Prague Literary Review, and many others.
[1] Cicero grew up in Vienna, Ohio, what he calls “a sleazy, one-red-light town.”[2][3] His mother was a tow-motor driver and his father was a butcher at a Kmart.
He lived in Seongnam in 2012 while teaching English; many of the poems in Bipolar Cowboy (2015) reference experiences from his time and relationships in South Korea.
[2][3] Cicero came to notoriety in the mid-2000s during the “alt-lit” movement, alongside writers like Tao Lin and Brandon Scott Gorrell.
For the poems in Bipolar Cowboy, Cicero said he was influenced by Tang dynasty poets such as Du Fu and Li Bo.