Sunday, January 28, 2024 “We are more than mere endurance” by Isaac Pickell
is how they begin
to resemble the land
robbed in creation:
another infant rooting
just above strata
that remembers how
smoothly thunder hushed us
to sleep, like we have
evolved to drift and slumber
whenever the sky portends
danger, as if I were talking
to myself and taking off
my clothes to be closer
to the dirt; making snow shadows
in the playground,
time takes shape painlessly
about me. I laid in the middle
of streets at night,
walked through town
making stories of the people
in their beds,
telling whole stories
in a flurry of blurred reminiscence
with ourselves at the center, cowering
from the helpless terror of being
just one person. But the math
for empathy isn’t supposed to add up
I say to my body, softly
About the Poet
Isaac Pickell is a Black and Jewish poet, PhD candidate, and adjunct instructor in Detroit, and a graduate of Miami University’s Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing. He is the author of two collections of poetry, EVERYTHING SAVED WILL BE LAST (Black Lawrence Press, 2021) and IT’S NOT OVER ONCE YOU FIGURE IT OUT (Black Ocean, 2023). Isaac’s taken a seat in all fifty states and has so much to look forward to.
Related Event
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- Isaac Pickell will join poet Jazz DeNero in a Greenspace Series reading at 4 p.m. on Saturday, February 17 in an outdoor reading and zine show at the Cantina in Duende, 85 Silo City Row in Buffalo.
The Poem of the Week feature is curated by literary legacy awardee R.D. Pohl.