iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Isaac Pickell @isaacpickell.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

There is no chance that we will fall apart There is no chance There are no parts — June Jordan

Isaac Pickell @isaacpickell.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Really ridiculously honored and also I never want to hear my poems in not- @maggiesmithpoet.bsky.social- voice ever again.

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Isaac Pickell @isaacpickell.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

How do you get the jobs where you write seven emails a day and fire people every so often and tell other people to do things and make one hundred thousand dollars a year?

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Reposted by Isaac Pickell

Daniel Sturniolo @dansturn.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

We are all experiences — everything

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Isaac Pickell @isaacpickell.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

PRESALE TIME!! The best time to order small press books is during presale, when there are author incentives and awards buzz begins. So order one, or order ten for all your friends. I mean look at that cover — who wouldn't want this on a coffee table. blacklawrencepress.com/books/the-sm...

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.

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Isaac Pickell @isaacpickell.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

Leslie Reese [from “Upside Down Tapestry Mosaic History” printed by Detroit’s Broadside Press, 1987] <<>> #smallpoemsunday @tomsnarsky.bsky.social

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 …

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Isaac Pickell @isaacpickell.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

Wrote a poem about the bags under my eyes.

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.

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Isaac Pickell @isaacpickell.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

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

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Reposted by Isaac Pickell

Nikki Wallschlaeger @nikkimwalls.bsky.social · 23/10/2025

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

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Isaac Pickell @isaacpickell.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

University administrators must have real comfy beds to sleep through the night after sending out sub-living wage contracts to adjuncts every semester.

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Reposted by Isaac Pickell

Tom Snarsky @tomsnarsky.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

happy birthday John Ashbery 🎈

I HAD THOUGHT THINGS
WERE GOING ALONG WELL

But I was mistaken.

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Isaac Pickell @isaacpickell.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

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.

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Isaac Pickell @isaacpickell.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

You guys. I've got a poem out today in @theoffingmag.bsky.social. It's called "Fuck my lecture on craft, your people are dying" and it's after @noorhindi.bsky.social. It's about daisies and some other things. I hope you check it out and if it hits you share it around.

theoffingmag.com

Fuck my lecture on craft, your people are dying - The Offing

Poetry - The Offing Magazine

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Isaac Pickell @isaacpickell.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

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.

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Isaac Pickell @isaacpickell.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

A friend of mine just shared a new poem they wrote and I am not exaggerating to say it's going to forever change how I thinkspeakwrite about its subject matter. Just an absolute opus. Make poet friends. They'll make you in return.

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Isaac Pickell @isaacpickell.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

"What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?"

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Isaac Pickell @isaacpickell.bsky.social · 01/02/2025

A mood for the mean gasps of winter— “The Horrible Snow Cat” 1969 woodcut, by Albert Dumouchel.

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Isaac Pickell @isaacpickell.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

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.

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Isaac Pickell @isaacpickell.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

an old prof used to call poetry a "sensory organ," one of the vital ways we figure out about the world around us, one of the ways we learn. this post is a guide, a goal: bring nothing to the poem but curiosity. at times bombast does get the better of me, but the most I ever *try* to hold is a map.

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Isaac Pickell @isaacpickell.bsky.social · 10/01/2025

Let's be all tumblr 2012! There are so many amazing collective bird nouns and we should share all of them. One of my favorites is a "trembling of finches" [and google tells me you can also call them a "charm"].

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