Isaac Pickell
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isaacpickell.bsky.social
Isaac Pickell
@isaacpickell.bsky.social
1.3K followers 1.1K following 170 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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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
isaacpickell.bsky.social
On aging and possibility, or:

forty words for turning forty
for #smallpoemsunday

@tomsnarsky.bsky.social
Middle age i have traded blithe limbs for fragile acts—all the days i ever breathed could crack as memory [ i tender past like an egg; what else might still grow]. i crane to heed something so important i leave my whole life for it.
September 28, 2025 at 4:33 PM
isaacpickell.bsky.social
Easily the most seen I've ever felt in review—

"these dense bricks that aren’t so heavy you can’t carry them, but you know you’ve got a bag of bricks slung over your shoulder."

<<>>

If that sounds good, buy this book? I'm quite sure you'll love its weight.

www.blackocean.org/catalog1/its...
September 26, 2025 at 1:43 PM
isaacpickell.bsky.social
A very #smallpoemsunday.

<<>>

@tomsnarsky.bsky.social
When you know The smell of tired blossom; how musty sweet are endings. A ruin of color. You say beauty is anything—to see the same yellow moon rising and not mention it.
September 21, 2025 at 5:51 PM
isaacpickell.bsky.social
University administrators must have real comfy beds to sleep through the night after sending out sub-living wage contracts to adjuncts every semester.
August 14, 2025 at 2:37 PM
Reposted by Isaac Pickell
tomsnarsky.bsky.social
happy birthday John Ashbery 🎈
I HAD THOUGHT THINGS WERE GOING ALONG WELL But I was mistaken.
July 28, 2025 at 6:51 PM
isaacpickell.bsky.social
Sometimes it's okay to write poems just because it's fun.
Early Retirement Plan Rich kid poets have so much fun doing their art, taking their risks, stepping on necks when real life people don’t really like their shit— if my parents were paid, I’d buy a silver palisade to wrap around the whole city limits & announce a parade to see my gilted words until everyone knew the feelings my bright gold brain had made.
July 27, 2025 at 12:08 AM
isaacpickell.bsky.social
"Before you go"

for Andrea Gibson
Before you go for Andrea Gibson when the famous poet dies— the one who sheltered death from slander and promised us it was no act of leaving— you try to follow their lead and plead to the sun I want to be somebody’s favorite hiding place. it hurts to become something new before we go [satellite, volcano, open door] and you aren’t ready yet: you still think you can write to survive your heartbeat [like our vessels will outlast us] but they were always spilling love like it would never run out and maybe a life doesn’t need any longer than that.
July 16, 2025 at 4:19 PM