Month: June 2024

Self-Confidence (2/26/2019)

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I want to be respected be a poetic academic
I am not smart enough not disciplined enough

energy communicable though like disease
eating away my own flesh a gallon of maggots

pouring out of my brain and back into my wet
mouth I buy milk that will spoil beside the next

molding jug islands of growths outside me how
can I control the way my mind dives off its board

so insular I keep knocking from inside the hollow
edges of my skull come out come out wherever

you are

(originally published in Academy of the Heart and Mind, Fall 2020)

Strangers

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I want to tell you tonight
the shadows on the moon
look like the silhouette
of a stranger asleep–
but you are asleep,
and when I wake you,
you tell me I shook
you from a dream
in which I cheated
on you, that I called
myself greater than
the moon, and my
gaze orbited around
every slender body
I’d see. You ask
me to join you
in bed, come
cuddle and
spoon–
but I walk
to the window
and fixate
on the
stranger

(originally published in Silent Auctions, Fall 2020)

Two Days Before Final Fantasy VII Remake, Bernie Ends His Campaign

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

    to play a game is to simply look into a void I need
    to limit the amount my eyes (or else the world’s
            but a buttercream) I dream I dream in pixels
            nostalgia of many Midgars transformed in what to partake
but all these riches of revolution memory is a waterfall
rushing headfirst cold into pointy rocks I wanted to forget this good
            game with you knowing neither of us could afford the new

(originally published in Marias & Sampaguitas, Summer 2021)