2021

After Millvale Music Festival, 2021

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

at Grist House the day is everlasting
       & we have just lived
through a pandemic.

August sun shining
                   I feel like an emperor
            owning the day
                                          til its end

the sandwich trucks
& hot dog carts
                                all of my life is good

we have just lived
through another
                           week under
                             shade of the
          everlasting days.

in all my life
   how many
                      days
  will
               I ever
                               get to feel like this?

a hundred?
                        maybe
                                         in only eighty
    years I need to
                               count
           my inventory

(originally published in Statement Magazine, 2023)

Nest

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

All this nesting leaves me
exhausted. When you awaken
I am too tired to live. One day
the hawk will know this. Sunrise,
the same tender air of earth to feed
new omens. The day a hill
between thunderstorms and ruddy
sunsets, with water neither
ephemeral nor potable.
Quartz trembles and falls
into my mouth. Words
say whatever is in them;
they always fall. A cowbird
on a branch sends out her scent.
(I realize these rocks are symbolic,
a character for which a metaphor
has never been written.) My nest
surrounded by stones has come
to speak in ways that neither
of us can hear. The nest is not
a cage, yet the absence of
a nest is also not a cage.
Inside whichever– I
know you have loved me.

(originally published in Capsule Stories, Summer 2021)

Video Games on New Year’s Day

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

grape stem the fruit centipede

          parched time

                    a skin between my teeth

fingernails tapping on blue porcelain bowl

          then the controller my hand’s touched everything in this place

thanks for your spider fingers on the soft of my chest

          lips purple with last night’s wine

                   new year burst with pessimism not

optimism beginnings are overrated

          I do best when I don’t know where I’m going

(originally published in A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Winter 2023)

You Want Positivity? Here’s Some Positivity

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

The sun shines on my goddamn sunflower teeth.
Thankful my dental appointment was rescheduled

to an indeterminate point for future me (who is
that crooked reflection in the mirror? Relieved

to see bad posture alive and well) to compensate
for. When I graduated college, I fell in love

at the slightest touch– autumn leaves floating
in a pond, the draft of winter wind through

the window. Now I’m older and more ragged
(the other day I tossed a rug with a painting

of a lion so I could replace it with speckled
blue) and, certainly, with so much heat death

to look forward to.

(originally published in The Broadkill Review, Summer 2021)

The Bucket

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Ripples of water
extend into days

we are wordless
with each other.

A storm breaks,
a dog whimpers.

We hear the groaning
Earth shifting

over countless hours
into the endless sea.

I’ve had enough
of windows,

where dreams
are a quick glance

over another
unfinished drink

in the middle
of the day.

(originally published in Count Seeds With Me, Spring 2022)