Month: December 2024

I worked too much this week

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

and will work too much the next.
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is diminishing–
I’m in the office sixty hours a week.
How was I supposed to know
to gaze into a distant glint?
I haven’t seen a star in years.
If not under a canopy of clouds
a canopy of smog.
If I had a kid she’d be grown now.
Instead our world is warming and
I drive down the street each day
guzzling jugs of precious resource–

we’re waiting on the water wars.
The water wars are now.

(originally published in Sybil Poetry Journal, Winter 2021)

Earth Puzzle

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

We think completing the jigsaw
depicting Earth will complete us, but
4 AM we float in half-consciousness,
hoping to realign our orbit, still aimed
into vastness, a jumbled mess on the
floor. Even the dog snores. Earlier,
Disco ran across our tarot cards, shuffling
a wrangled meaning into fate. The Hermit.
The Star. The Hanged Man. I try to string
together half-correlations. I want to drink
more. I open the window and inhale.
I look into the dark and wonder
how we can piece it all together.

(originally published in Artvilla, Spring 2023)

Low-Visibility Night Drive Home

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

                            For Tarik

highway needles appear
fast white lines I bullet
along an aimless angle
fate a roll of die half my
life I have had my license
tonight asphalt is slippery
and tenuous when I spend
too much time alone only
the hum of engine knowing
tires hiss more air the further
I go do not devalue yourself
the chanting mass says my
head loud roiling in ninety-mile
-per-hour grief I did not know
Tarik as well as those who knew
but I miss him should have
called in this ubiquitous darkness
smoke leather peeling off my
ten-year steering wheel a passing
truck sprays my windshield
mist this sharp steady rain Reek
drove a convertible he may have
been drenched but he would
have laughed made it seem okay
if I knew his misery if I could
see behind his laughter
mask the off-ramp winding
curve onto the final highway
home in his deep empathy
Reek drove this stretch of night
after switching off his lights

(originally published in Fine Lines, Fall 2021)

Red String

/ James Croal Jackson / 1 Comment

the road to dream is knotted
tangled          never broken
early mornings Santa Clarita

studio beneath setting moon
we talked     bright futures
in film reel and photograph

just two in a crowd afraid
of its own shadows        of
stepping out into the light

and not being recognized
       yes we have gone our
separate ways              love

and heartbreak heartbreak
and love     cardinal singing
an evening song to lull us

back to valley open full
with ink quill and camera
and old dreams to dream of

(originally published in Agony Opera, Summer 2021)

Blue Bridge

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

sometimes curtains blocking sunlight
are only ghosts    sometimes ghost   light
in windows only a brightness beyond
the blue bridge   I work beneath   only
the bridge will lift us over the Allegheny
only the bridge will float us into the grit
of the city the people I used to know
I don’t know them anymore    what is
a bed but unmade sheets   soft   silk
I must become a bridge    to get
myself out of bed in   morning sunlight
beyond the ghosts of days
I used to possess   I was
a curtain blocking the trajectory
of my own light

(originally published in indicia lit, Spring 2022)

Unravel

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

the rug by the door. the tongue

-tied twisted loops
                                i am reckless

driving east on 76 intoxicated

by skunked memories
           smoking in the garage
before mom got home

                           black lunged
i-wanna-be-young
-again.    only
to change
                               my course
of history.       of course.

dandelion petals    torn
in two.
                  into something
not a flower.          no longer

the sour taste stays
on my tongue

(originally published in Across the Margin, Summer 2020)

White Noise Eucharist

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

the bathroom fan. now I am asleep. no
god has been asleep as long as I remember.

there was sleeping in church my pew
a long loungechair. white women

singing sunflower and epistle. to
write a love letter these days means

you are able to buy bread. too many
starved. hearts empty tanks. fill

a cup with holy water. pour into
brown grass. I have never been a man

of faith. I open plastic packets without
looking. I consume what’s inside.

(originally published in Poetry Super Highway, Summer 2022)

Disc Golf

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

My excuse for a poor score:
the frisbee has teeth. And a mind.
It chose to rebel inside the wind–

I agree, of course, when you say
our food delivery job is temporary.
We have hours before we need

to clock in– an ordinary morning
straddling the Olentangy river.
Any way to get our minds off

routine: when scanning the field
for ticks, I find nothing but
excuses, for never becoming

the suit-and-tie my parents
wanted me to be, my score
well over par, another

wayward toss into the breeze
hopes for clarity on a journey
I know not where will lead.

(originally published in Penmen Review, Fall 2020)