Isaac Pickell
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isaacpickell.bsky.social
Isaac Pickell
@isaacpickell.bsky.social
1.3K followers 1.2K following 190 posts
black & jewish poet & phd student in Detroit | work @blackoceanbooks.bsky.social and @blacklawrence.bsky.social and @deadmallpress.bsky.social | Cave Canem fellow | just very glad to be here.
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isaacpickell.bsky.social
Happy new year everybody.
Twenty twenty-six five in the morning and we’re talking future like late nights aren’t time travel. hannah says she wants radical honesty for her resolution. the thought of being true when it hurts terrifies me and it hurts so often. but I want to be more like her. the sky is so cloudless and in the brisk air it’s mine it’s mine it’s mine— these Nas tracks, the best ones, came out when I was seven years old and we still wait for dead presidents to die. I’m tired but it’s a new year and the moon is bright.
January 1, 2026 at 11:15 AM
isaacpickell.bsky.social
I've shared this with no less than ten people offline today.

Three have responded with "I love you."

Seems like a pretty good ratio.
tomsnarsky.bsky.social Tom Snarsky @tomsnarsky.bsky.social · 25d
happy #smallpoemsunday from William Bronk
Stay alive; at least for the moment: it doesn’t last long. Stay alive. Other worldly considerations though are out. The living has nothing to do with the life.
December 14, 2025 at 8:38 PM
isaacpickell.bsky.social
This sentence has been caught in my teeth for days, chewy and true and hard to live up to—

We're given so many chances to sell out [everything]. Good to remember it's not an imperative.
Settle/ment after Christina Sharpe People will keep saying that white supremacy is setting, these are death throes. People will say hold close what you can and mean the big things that hold us back; this low-slung sun-glare splaying out for the horizon can’t be solved with shade. A site of refuge doesn’t look like compromise. Just to have a little shine. But I don’t have to embrace anything that means me and us harm—We weren’t meant to be bargain- ing chips. Take it, and what will our dead have left to say besides live.
December 10, 2025 at 5:48 PM
Reposted by Isaac Pickell
nikkimwalls.bsky.social
I got something very special in the mail today from my publisher ✨

You Must Live: New Poetry From Palestine

edited by Tayseer Abu Odeh and Sherah Bloor, translators and editors. (Copper Canyon Press, 2025).

💜thank you for not looking away💜 @coppercanyonpress.bsky.social
October 23, 2025 at 10:23 PM