ISSUE 01: STATE(D) VIOLENCE
ABOUT
ISAAC PICKELL
Isaac Pickell is a Black and Jewish poet, PhD candidate, and adjunct instructor in Detroit. A Cave Canem Fellow, Isaac is 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), and his most recent work can be found in The Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, and Poetry Northwest.
LIVE BROADCAST GENOCIDE
[transmission] It has become impossible not to see
that someone somewhere mourns somebody
like you, and the intimacy of dead son, dead
husband, dead friend touches like it hides
right under your skin, like it’s yours, like it’s true.
We will never have the privilege of our parents
and their parents and their parents saying
it was like a dream, not real until it was over,
because pain today is already everywhere, blasting
your eyeballs and your parents’ eyeballs
and their parents’ eyeballs: you can’t deny or come
to grips with it, can’t swim through the deepest
parts of yourself to find traces of empathy
to linger, linger, like dust on the mantle,
soot in the fireplace. There is no retrospect,
only now: it has become impossible not to see.
[transmission] What you see next are burning
books streamed for consumption, a message
that is not subtle: pain can be evoked as a garnish,
an accoutrement to greater pain. If you wonder
of all the pains, why this one, you can’t recognize
what it means to erase a people, blinded
by the corona of what it means to be
civilized, who means to be civilized. Nimble yet
absent when it matters most, your credulity was saved
for people who look like you, until the broadcast
left you no other choice. Eating a crinkle of crow,
you are shamed by your prior okayness with this reality,
and forget for a terrible moment that life must go on.
[transmission] Evidence of crimes pile up like bodies.
Well, not like bodies. And this is just the beginning.
You cannot go numb to the beginning and like
losing baby teeth, you gnaw at your own jaw, seeking
sensation. With everything laid bare, empathy is no longer
a project of self-exploration but a political choice,
and you want to make the right choice. You feel
the need to do something, but are trapped on the line
between if you have the time and the burning ash
cakes their lungs. You do not have the time and there is
no guarantee of efficacy, but it has become impossible
to mistake how the burning ash cakes their lungs, how
the bodies pile up.
ANOTHER AMERICAN DIES IN PALESTINE IN THE PASSIVE VOICE
for Aysenur Eygi
A statement was made: shots were fired
at a main instigator of violent activity
who hurled rocks at the forces and posed
a threat. The bullet rang out
as protection from harm, the injury
of staring down wickedness
and seeing a mirror. Lifeless
headlines were written for your eyes
that bulge in thin air, your lungs
gasping at the vacuum
of culpability. Condolences were
extended, but it was said:
the most important thing to do is to gather
the facts. Witnesses were questioned
and undermined, their word no better
than your attention span. A narrative was
styled from the sludge. The presidential
candidate was allowed her hush.
The parents were devastated, but—
The parents would not be
silent: this was not about one death, they killed her
in cold blood, they kill them all
in cold blood. The video shows: two hundred meters
away, no confrontation, guilty parties. The IOF:
fired shots, the Secretary of State: emptied
words, the rest of us:
THE ANNIVERSARY
They will gesture toward death and talk
about victory like it was the inexorable
outcome of slaughter.
They will gesture toward conquest and talk
about the future like it was written
in a prayer book.
They will gesture toward vengeance and talk
about hostages like they were meant to
come home.
They will gesture toward money and talk
about mourning like it mattered
when they saw opportunity.
They will gesture toward power and talk
about rubble like it crumbled
all on its own.
They will gesture toward empathy and talk
about deprivation like it was novel
and not structural.
They will gesture toward a century and talk
about the war like it started
on ten seven, twenty twenty-three.
They will gesture toward annihilation and talk
about solemnity like it was driven by
the resonance of never again.
IF I MUST DIE
after Refaat Alareer
I can’t begin this poem
the way he did:
foretelling my own end
is just a game,
like wondering who’d show
at my funeral—
If I must die, everyone
will get their chance
to say goodbye and no one
will have to sell a thing.
Somewhere in Michigan,
there will be no blaze
or orphan child, no need
for angels made from wings
or string or a hundred
frightful eyes. But still,
but still, you must live:
the blazemakers
the orphantakers
circle the crypt but never
fall, a wretched survival—
You must be every bit
as stubborn as them
(even if you’re white
with a long tail)
so some plum of hope
outlasts the wickedness
that took Refaat and so,
so, so, so many—
I used to believe death was patient
with the worst of us
to prove we all get time
to figure our shit out,
but we don’t: sometimes
there’s only enough years
to remember a tale.
So don’t sell their story,
the one he paid for with his life,
the one that may be hung
in blue and white
from the altar beside my casket.
If I must die, let it call
a different tune, a plum
of hope plucked
from impossible rubble.