Our Ritual

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I kiss the cheek of my cat
   she hums in her sputtering
      engine the comfort
  of our ritual she twitches
         on my chest stares
              deep into my eyes
        our noses
                  sniffing
                              each other

                truth is
                      her teeth
            reek of yesterday
                  but I am trying
                          to rid myself
                  of the past
                                year

(originally published in The Gorko Gazette, Summer 2024)

The Shrubs of Doubt Were Misplaced

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Still, the dogs watch me from behind
a fence when I walk the opposite route–

against traffic on Gross Street–
the view changes enough to convince

me I am in a different place in my life
with its industrial constellations,

a parking garage sparkling with hovering
hospital lights while skeleton neighbors

decorate homes for Halloween and blue
jays all seek a different weather. Maybe

October chill has knocked a new belief
into my teeth. Brick by brick I walk

by buildings of my past that survived
into the current, too, and a leaf

from an unseen tree floats
onto the chest of my charcoal

jacket. I pin it there
for the days I will forget.

(originally published in Ariel Chart, Spring 2024)

Super Bowl, 2025

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

we wore our best hunter-green waited patiently
as men took a different kind of field we craved
sustenance a resurrection a flight a waiting
by window in the purple light under wrong
tin roof what we tossed into sky we threw
away our wing-missiles pigskins of self
talons landing burrowing deep out of view
what craft drunk disturbance in the flapping
february frigidity that beat against our jackets
yours the bird slick knit on surface mine
a thready childhood blanket to keep no one
and nothing not the least of heat my heart
drinks beside you as it waits for the game
to be good but it never does and always was

(originally published in Fast Pop Lit, Fall 2025)

every time the door

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

every time the door
opens a burst of frigid
air gobbles the field

whole milk in my
mocha latte to
fight winter sadness

defines the palette
of the room monotone
grays beside the fire

extinguisher sign
points to a cheap
Hewlett-Packard ink-

jet no one has used
since being on this planet
I have grown purple

grapes of jadedness
thorny arms hug nothing
I have to say

(originally published in Books ‘N’ Pieces Mag, Winter 2025)

Jesse and Andrew

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

were two good friends in Los Angeles,
and in last night’s dream, Andrew announces
he quit acting, though we knew him as a screenwriter,
because he found success in Ohio, and thinking back,
in reality, we were journeying toward the same adolescent
dream, green stars, and we pursued when we were heartbroken,
worn-out, reckless, and last I saw Andrew he stuffed quarters
into the jukebox at gold-lit Birds, repeating Sussudio, commenting
on every woman at the bar, and I didn’t speak up. And Jesse had
returned that day from Thailand. He was sad and I was in love.
I had a chance to see him again– last fall, New York– but he has
a kid now and I could not muster a bus, or to revisit reminiscing
the dreams we shared, what we had to wake up from
during our long, separate searches for meaning.

(originally published in Ink Pantry, Fall 2024)

Serpent

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

a red serpent lives inside me
keeping venom in my blood
and I don’t mean this as a sin
or shame but rather a reality
like toxins in the grass and
in the fruit we eat, everywhere
everywhere silent killers lurking
in the stems of tomatoes growing
rapidly, the chemicals in me
and in your child, oh god,
there’s a serpent in your child
and if we yank it from his throat
our serpents will bite and bite
until we forget the garden

(originally published in The Beatnik Cowboy, Winter 2024)