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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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
A very #smallpoemsunday.

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@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
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
isaacpickell.bsky.social
BIG NEWS BIG NEWS CAPITAL LETTERS BIG NEWS—

Mark your calendars! Save your dollars! My second full-length collection, THE SMALLEST MISTAKE WE CALL HUMAN, is forthcoming June 2026 @blacklawrence.bsky.social!

Couldn't be more excited to be working with Diane on another project. You're gonna love it.
[Black Lawrence Press Logo] PUBLISHING AGREEMENT This Publishing Agreement ("Agreement") is entered into as of June 25, 2025 ("Effective Date") by and between Black Lawrence Press, ("Publisher"), and Isaac Pickell, ("Author"), concerning a work (with the working title) The smallest mistake we call human (Work) and described as a work of poetry.
June 28, 2025 at 5:58 PM
isaacpickell.bsky.social
What to do about the war keep looking away I can't keep looking away I can't keep looking away I can't keep looking away I can't keep looking away I can't keep looking away I can't keep looking away I can't keep looking away I can't keep looking away I can't keep looking away I can't keep looking away I can't keep looking away I can't keep looking away I can't keep looking away I can't keep looking away I can't keep looking away I can't keep looking away I can't keep looking away I can't keep looking away I can't keep looking away I can't keep looking
May 20, 2025 at 6:36 PM
isaacpickell.bsky.social
Not enough time is invested coming up w/ names for readings, but ATTACK OF THE KILLER QUEER ECOSPHERE may just inspire every other organizer to do their best.

Come see Yasmine Bolden, Emdash, Aerik Francis, Jacob J. Billingsly, Allya Yourish, & me!

Email alocasiamagazine@gmail.com for the link.
March 24 @ 6:30–7:45! Flowers! Red, cream, and green! And the information from the text part of the post.
March 9, 2025 at 1:34 PM
isaacpickell.bsky.social
"What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?"
February 10, 2025 at 1:48 AM
isaacpickell.bsky.social
A mood for the mean gasps of winter— “The Horrible Snow Cat”

1969 woodcut, by Albert Dumouchel.
February 1, 2025 at 9:01 PM
isaacpickell.bsky.social
Exactly one year & one day ago, I lost my best friend.

I spotted her cancerous ulcer in the golden hour of morning & froze. I couldn't call the vet & make it real, so I wrote instead.

Today that poem is in Poetry Northwest. It's long: click the link & grab tissue.

www.poetrynw.org/poetry/diagn...
Diagnostics BY ISAAC PICKELL What do you do when maroon news finds you glinting in that lovely light of just after dawn, when you discover a weeping sore on your dog’s tail, shiny and ulcerous, a raw wound vibrant in its crimson and vermilion and scarlet and salmon and every other shade of color that blossoms in the intricacies of a sore, and blood, of course, blood red, too, and you wonder how we learned to be disgusted by the body breaking through its skin when such a complex consonance of hues would be striking in any other context, carmine and burgundy and cinnabar and rose, a patch of sunset, and you can’t stop rolling her onto her side to get a better look, as if this time you’ll see something new that might prove wrong what you already know to be true, and she looks so shy about it, or even ashamed, like she knows what’s coming because part of her does, A beautiful good girl, all black, with a leaf on her nose.
January 14, 2025 at 12:48 PM
isaacpickell.bsky.social
oh that's just a lovely distillation of this neck.
January 10, 2025 at 5:58 PM
isaacpickell.bsky.social
You ever read something and let it rewire your expectations and desires for what can and should be written? Like “oh! you’re allowed to do that!”

It’s not like I’ve never seen this before…but at such keen and kinked angles.

It’s not a gimmick and it’s not simplistic. It’s working.
Oh take off the fu cking tight helmet of thi nking for the total imbrication of ri me and shatter ed gardens.
January 4, 2025 at 10:38 PM
isaacpickell.bsky.social
Someone on The Other Site said what they wanted for the new year was to be "poetry famous." I think maybe they're kidding, but—
Poetry famous I don’t know, I just want to be a deer in a field, white throat at rest against an amber dew of grass, antlers pronged just so, greeting a new sun that’s the same sun as the old one, a deer you see as you turn the country road into glimmer, shield your eyes from the coming day and say look, would you look at that deer.
January 3, 2025 at 9:20 AM
isaacpickell.bsky.social
A holiday prayer.

[accidentally took this down before I'd had my coffee, but lord knows—doesn't matter what lord—I stand behind it.]
A holiday prayer Jesus said don’t genocide, so much At least, at least in the land he was Born, on the day of his nativity, Or in the hopes of his return; You’re all doing it all wrong.
December 27, 2024 at 9:35 AM
isaacpickell.bsky.social
thirty-eight candles & one for good luck.
Preparing to blow out candles on a cheesecake. Celebrating a flameless cheesecake
December 25, 2024 at 8:32 PM
isaacpickell.bsky.social
Karma, karma, karma, karma, karma chameleon.
December 24, 2024 at 4:59 PM
isaacpickell.bsky.social
I've got a new poem [after Basie Allen] in this season's issue of Poetry Northwest — it's about sound and power and bodies and all of us.

~thanks to the editors~ for including me in this terrific issue.

[if the words are too small to read, don't forget to click the alt text!]
ISAAC PICKELL We demand options that taste like movement after Basie Allen We gale like quietness hums, an enveloping swell into the stale air until all other noise is a verb in the past tense. We din against what is until your ears ring. We chorus wind, ripple in the space between the letters of the word change. We sound, clang and knell, blotting out a bargain that only promised us the ground where we already stand because We demand options that taste like movement. You can see they hear us. We broke their rhythm, schemes like tripping on the double dutch rope. Syncopation gone feral, we strike, and they can’t just wait for all of us to go hungry, can they? The great fear is they do wait us out until the clock chimes empty on our cabinets and cupboards, until we grow tired of being followed by death like a stray cat we fed once in winter, until we go tender without sleep, fist around an amulet just strong enough to keep our hands warm. Until there’s nowhere left to set our feet. We weigh choices that sound like never, hear like nowhere. We stand together with nothing. And yet and yet we stand, we gale, we sound, we ferment in their cup and they grow drunk on clout, we taste bitter in their mouths and when they open to spit, we make space for each other, hold their throat hostage. We are their throat, always were. We hold tight. We wait for better options. We demand the space between the letters of the word change. Winter & Spring 2025 issue of Poetry Northwest. The cover features a painting of a landscape in an impressionist style witha. few cute sheeps cluttering the foreground.
December 21, 2024 at 3:39 PM
isaacpickell.bsky.social
Coming in early for #smallpoemsunday from @tomsnarsky.bsky.social, but every time I read the little poems he posts, they make me want to write one.
Your radicalization moment I used to believe everyone thought of themselves on the righteous side of things, that people were just wrong about the world, not intentionally wicked. Oh how wrong I was.
December 14, 2024 at 6:07 PM
isaacpickell.bsky.social
My dad owned a used bookstore for 30 years, which meant just about every gift I received growing up was a used book.

One of my great treasures from that era is this old Nikki Giovanni edition. Her work really helped me figure my shit out.

May her memory be a blessing.
Book titled black feeling black talk black judgment, by Nikkie Giovanni. Poem (No Name No. 2) Bitter Black Bitterness Black Bitter Bitterness Bitterness Black Brothers Bitter Black Get Blacker Get Bitter Get Black Bitterness NOW
December 10, 2024 at 5:58 PM
isaacpickell.bsky.social
This Wednesday at 8pm I’ve got a Zoom poetry reading in celebration of my new chapbook and it’s going to be fantastic.

I’m really excited for this one since I’ve never read poems from the chap to an audience before, and I like the other work I’ve chosen for the event, too.

DM me for the link!
November 10, 2024 at 8:59 PM
isaacpickell.bsky.social
Hi Bluesky!

I’ve got a brand new chapbook out from Dead Mall Press (an incredible micro-press that donates half of all earnings to mutual aid)!

Below’s the link — I hope you give it a read; I think you’ll love it.

deadmallpress.com/bookstore/a-...
November 10, 2024 at 8:56 PM
isaacpickell.bsky.social
Cave Canem was cofounded by Toi Derricotte, one of my north stars, a poet who can pass as white and never shies away from the challenges of that conversation.

**Feeling incredibly honored to announce that I'm a Cave Canem Fellow for 2024!**

Very excited to listen, learn, and write.
February 16, 2024 at 12:57 PM
isaacpickell.bsky.social
IT’S NOT OVER is in the world!
A real thing you can touch & hold!

www.blackocean.org/catalog1/its...
November 9, 2023 at 6:09 PM
isaacpickell.bsky.social
Philadelphia! I'm floating your way in a couple Fridays!

Just thrilled to be reading alongside @alinapleskova.bsky.social & stephanie cawley at Lot 49 Books on Nov 17.

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October 31, 2023 at 4:56 PM
isaacpickell.bsky.social
this little leafy guy.
July 29, 2023 at 11:47 AM