Every person I imagine becomes fabric by Isaac Pickell
Associate editor Julia Kooi Talen on today’s bonus short: The minute I finished reading Isaac Pickell’s enchanting short, I wanted to go back to the beginning to amble in the folds of his graceful prose. The way this piece moves is like watching silk curtains flutter in soft sunlight and breeze. Pickell is brilliantly careful, threading tactile moments that lead to vast, resonant ecocritical questions.
Every person I imagine becomes fabric
not of the community, or time, the little movie in my head has lost touch with connotative imagery. they’re transformed to textile. like, muslin, or tulle, or sturdy polyester, or the kind of nylon blend that bends and then also breaks, eventually. it’s been weeks of this, flattening goosebump and vessel and pulse into thread. because it’s hard to commiserate with carpet squares. sometimes I still talk to myself about mourning the intimacy of some cheap swatch I never really cared for. what happens when you start wearing your acquaintances. I mean that we already are, and their silences carry a staggering honesty stretched across our dilated skin. I have been careful to avoid visualizing strangers so they can stay real; there’s no good reason to choose curiosity over catharsis or listen for what no one is saying. but for the first time, every story from every corner is accessible, it takes just a few clicks to fill our closet with an unending wail of joy borrowed from some other string’s sorrow shout borrowed from some other string’s wail of joy borrowed from an endless economy of utilitarian bargains. remember that Tuvalu is still disappearing into the ocean and think about the cost of hand-spun silk, how it feels for itself whether or not you can afford it. artisanal torment. this one really is a question: how do you smile for anything that has a price.
Isaac Pickell is a passing poet & PhD student in Detroit, where he writes and teaches around the borderlands of black literature. You can find his work in Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, Fence, Protean Magazine, Sixth Finch, and his 2021 debut everything saved will be last, from Black Lawrence Press. Isaac's taken a seat in all fifty states and has so much to look forward to.
