Isaac Pickell
LightNews LightNews
banner
isaacpickell.bsky.social
Isaac Pickell
@isaacpickell.bsky.social
1.4K followers 1.2K following 200 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.
Posts Replies Media Videos
isaacpickell.bsky.social
(the text of the body of the poem moves up and down with every word like little ripples) Crystallography at its nadir, cold saps moisture from snow until it’s light enough to be swept back up into air. eddies sparkle gold blue pink, effervesce unlikely tints we must have once called magic. schools closed for cold and protest. the big news of the day: history is screaming, literally screaming, and the men who know insist that you can’t hear.
January 28, 2026 at 4:14 PM
isaacpickell.bsky.social
An essay on tragedy

after @sandmansimonds.bsky.social
Essay on tragedy after Sandra Simonds it is good to have a lover. to move upstate, any state. to trust water will find its stream. a naked shoulder will give you perspective to watch stampede from a distance, bones cracked before death. in bed, dark cocoons the viscera of bent limbs, each trample seen for what it is: someone refusing to surrender their time. some shoulders have the right give. only some lovers gasp the same tenor. but everyone’s seen the lion king. indignity can be quiet or it can be endlessly paying attention.
January 25, 2026 at 8:23 AM
isaacpickell.bsky.social
The poem we're all trying to write right now only Gary Larson did it better, and with cows.
One poet cow addresses a room of listener cows. The cow recites the following poem: Distant Hills The distant hills call to me. Their rolling waves seduce my heart. Oh, how I want to graze in their lush valleys. Oh, how I want to run down their green slopes. Alas, I cannot. Damn the electric fence! Damn the electric fence! Thank you
January 19, 2026 at 7:10 PM
isaacpickell.bsky.social
sonnet sonnet sonnet
sonnet sonnet sonnet
sonnet sonnet sonnet
sonnet sonnet sonnet
sonnet sonnet sonnet
sonnet sonnet sonnet
sonnet sonnet sonnet
sonnet sonnet sonnet
sonnet sonnet sonnet
sonnet sonnet sonnet
sonnet sonnet sonnet
sonnet sonnet sonnet
sonnet sonnet sonnet
sonnet sonnet sonnet.
Maybe the end is extremely nigh any poem that tries to catch old prophets up to speed disappoints the centuries— we’re running out of time to be running out of time; now the fires can husk whole countries [yes, we still be having countries]; people freeze on streets, starve in their homes, die for no better reason than someone else wants it; but we also tend hopes that are quietly alive: shoots plume under the hum of central heating, dirt breaks for life, tendrils take leaf, and kings will come to thresh them; leafless industry pumps death into sky; no one names the dark age because we see too much; a melting world won’t mend us.
January 16, 2026 at 1:57 PM
isaacpickell.bsky.social
after @makecommon.bsky.social
Immiserate after Joe Hall maybe someday we [the big we] we’ll try to make things better maybe someday we [smaller now] we’ll feel it
January 12, 2026 at 8:50 PM
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 · Dec 14
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