Month: February 2024

Dad always thought I was destined

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

for greatness that was his last mistake
we massed his grave the family in a slab

without belief of afterlife in this life
I despised his guardian angels his

stunt crash resurrections his hearing
was blurry one sentence led into another

bled into my mother’s ears one time she
threw a hot rag at him during recovery at

home his ribs broken she was at her breaking
point before his death & unrelated I claim

the universe massed petunias in grass by
his name so bruised so blue & purple

(originally published in Midway Journal, Fall 2020 – nominated for Best of the Net)

Safe Basements

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

red morning
light drapes      the fog of

            stage left            everyone
left            up up down down left

right left right B A        START

                         1994

white socks         blackened

                            jungleworld

the base                       the base

swamp playgrounds     woodchips
bruises                 kneescrapes

black eye    blank
avoid    contact

years until a second player
amazing     to be unlimited

      one can falsely       attribute

                        an escape
      helicopter

or      i could’ve gone
                                   upstairs

(originally published in I Want You to See This Before You Leave, Summer 2020)

Countdown

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Vodka I would glug from a wound
on my forearm, health preached and instructed.

I said I saw a liver pumping liquid from the sky
but the crowd called it cirrus. I could not differentiate

lust from love, not in the waning daylight,
not when I am trying to make it

the rest of the year wanting to forget
its starting incident (the backyard pond

shimmering in the moonlight amidst televisions
of confetti). The public countdown ends

at zero but I keep counting, never an end in sight,
always with my eye on the next

golden apple to descend into a crowd.

(originally published in BOMBFIRE, Spring 2021)

Writing a Break-Up Album in the Underworld of Los Angeles

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

parking garage stone and yellow emergency
the microphone’s metal web against my lips

to vomit last year in haphazard dollops
of song, wolf, and waterfall dry music

career in loneliness this lifetime achievement
many-tailed and thick porous semiconscious

rambling strummed brown fingernails clacking
away at my hard reverberation of longing the car

window closed to keep the sound in


(originally published in The City Key, Spring 2020)

Forces

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

My friend once announced to a room of strangers
my poems plunge them into pools of water
I guess that’s a phobia my inability to swim

for more than a minute and always on the shallow
side last night my Uber driver told me she tells
her kids be courageous be kind and went on

to talk about her Ziggy and Shane like I was family
On Tuesday I’ll let them go further than our back
alley what liberation! but then the world

five kids tugged at her jacket last week on the haunted
hay ride I get it I feel invisible forces pulling me
every cardinal direction at once yet clouds keep moving

and I struggle to stay honest I don’t want you
to know lust the long rope tight around
my neck leashed to the wagon and I throw straw

into brown grass to keep the chainsaw
killers at bay though I know the monsters
are actors wielding masks they sell me the part

of me I run from because I know anything
the world gives me lattes Lagunitas
love I return worse than when given

(originally published in The Orchards Poetry Journal, Spring 2020)

Jessie Must Think I Am Pathetic

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Another gray sky day, empty gas tank worries in the countryside
nowhere don’t you long for my touch? Oz runs just far enough
for the bone against the backdrop of my outstretched arm
hand out fingers extended & I don’t know where I stand with Jessie
except she must find me pathetic as she walks into water under the
influence of Dr. Dog & now she swim-dances the past three days she’s
walked along the rock edge of the pool. & now I need to text Tony Z.
what’s a man most afraid of? I’m getting used to inadequacy. Oz brings
his bone to the other side of the fence. Jessie says she misses the green,
the pool purified at the beginning. Sara throws pong ball through
the hole of a lime lifesaver floatie and a butterfly metaphor soars
above the water. Have you ever almost drowned on drugs? I don’t
recommend it. The lesson is gravity’s not the occasionally falling apple
but the drifting leaf toward the other side, whatever the definition. September
third and we just got our first sunburns. Hannah leaves the house after
work and like a magic trick, three pong balls appear in the water
and the sun reveals itself a moment. Oz lays in the grass in front
of me before a philosophical discussion about casserole and how to cope
with beans bought at the beginning of pandemic we will never eat.

(originally published in KNOT Magazine, Fall 2021)