Isaac Pickell
The way your body forces you to pay
attention: you don’t get to forget
you have a body, that neutral
state of being, a direct and inert
extension of your brain
to be seen as you
see— No, your body
announces itself, becomes
some thing external you have
to account for, make time for,
apologize for, like trying to figure
out the hint in each syllable
of every doctor and their gaze.
You tell me aging’s a bitch. You tell me
of black women’s weathering,
how old you can feel when
the doctors expect you to erode.
You tell me to look at you
when I’m saying goodbye:
all you want is that easy
feeling when you know
you can share the best parts of you
and not just the necessary ones
When you have to remind me to do the dishes
I try to find a way to tell you I wanted to grow
up to be just like my mother, but you are
too tired of living through all the lessons
I learned from my father to give that thought
much purchase: I learned to be a man from a man
frozen in gender, and every year
my body forgets another way to be soft,
refusing to cave to the politics
of how it once moved. I grow
rigid, stuck in my ways, and more
like him every day. Some people say
he’s a great guy and they mean for his time.
I am tired of time moving over me.
I want to wield the past like an old god
and strike out at a future full of the garbled
echoes of long dead men this static
country tells us is natural. I wanted to grow, but
you just had to refold our kid’s laundry
so he didn’t go to school all a-wrinkle.
The distortion would make this sound
like a funny anecdote. I hope
he doesn’t hear it.
Isaac Pickell is a Black and Jewish poet & PhD candidate in Detroit, where he teaches the writing of poetry and the reading of literature. He is the author of 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.