Isaac Pickell

@isaacpickell.bsky.social

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https://blacklawrencepress.com/books/the-smallest-mistake-we-call-human/ poet & phd student in Detroit | books and chaps @blackoceanbooks.bsky.social @blacklawrence.bsky.social @deadmallpress.bsky.social | just very glad to be here.

Pastoral In Detroit, I miss you nothing like a gravesite I can’t visit. For many in Gaza, there is nowhere to go—bulldozed, blackboxed, the dead property of the state. Humanitarian exchange they call it, sometimes years after he says the wrong thing to a soldier on the busy street or, just beyond the orchard, she carries a flag too close to the fence and a family rushes in, knowing goodbyes must come quickly.
MANUSCRIPT! CONSULTATION! SERVICES! through May 31 @ blacklawrencepress.submittable.com from Black Lawrence Press with Isaac Pickell
I’m trying to quit smoking again, for the finances not for health or survival or actually for survival but the kind of survival where people tend to say it’s gonna be okay and they really mean it in their eyes, not like with cancer, how people tell people with cancer it’s gonna be okay and really what they’re trying to say is I will miss you when you’re gone
A book cover. Two black birds of unknown species ponder a flash of light rising from horizon. One bird says "The Smallest Mistake We Call Human." The cover is lovely and everyone you know will like it.
Fuck! Fuck! Everything is so bad!! There’s an auction on dreams — Bonanza! Palooza! Extra- vaganza! Our one reverie sold for cents on the dollar. We got to be so good just to hold on to what we got — they have us rung like trees, growing half a centimeter a year and calling it progress. In the century it takes to see a difference, we’re all dead. Fuck. I just want to say something true that doesn’t hurt — palms and love handles say perfect ain’t the only way to stay alive. If I’m wrong, let me down easy.
Ars poetica The long history of the hyoid bone, the u-shaped hull of a chin that supports the rudderless tongue, suggests humans have sung for a million years. Or at least developed the physical ability to sing. But, scientists agree, who wouldn’t sing that could.
I ask: where is our voice? where are the ghosts wearing our lips and our sound? so that we can do something about this amnesia calling: all ghosts who spit with fury at our fear of being awakened from this coma calling all ghosts. calling all ghosts …
Tapetum lucidum My dark circles get so bad you used to think there was something wrong with me other than everything you already knew was wrong with me. Sleeplessness, smoking, salt, and bittergrief years — I made this mask honestly. Raccoon eyes can turn a yawning dark delicate enough to hold, glowing blue and silver, or red as warning: a mirror behind the retina gives fugitive light a second chance to be seen. Scientists called it bright tapestry, this iridescence hiding in animal gaze. For bitter years — we weren’t built nocturnal, but we were designed for adaptation. I see midnight unfurling and forage on.
Diaspore (n.) botanical: that which scatters from the source I would choose no state but like gardeners bend to water, what fails us we must set to mend
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
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
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.
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.
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.
[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.
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
March 24 @ 6:30–7:45! Flowers! Red, cream, and green! And the information from the text part of the post.
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 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.
Preparing to blow out candles on a cheesecake.
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.
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.
Book titled black feeling black talk black judgment, by Nikkie Giovanni.
One two step for the end of history The neck is a hearty metonym for every pressure point they have us in, but we have so much body and they only have two boots. So shake a little bit, rattle every bone you’ve got and roll a little bit, do the worm like it’s still in style, wriggle out from under their steel-toe and crack a smile, spin your hips and stomp your feet until you feel something start to shake free.