akron

On the table at the family

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

gathering is a photo of me
in flip-flops atop the roof
of my childhood home
holding a rake to the sky
my brother says I did not

recognize that was you
my sister says wow you are
actually doing manual labor
and in my mind I know
that was the morning after

M stayed over when
I was visiting from LA and
I had just finished raking
grimy blackened leaves off
the roof that gathered in

the years since Dad died
but it’s true he made me
hate the yard and stressed
the lawn as living in a filth
we’d have to fix and every

few days in the summer
he’d place the red mower
outside the shed waiting
for me to kill the grass in
diminishing rectangles

(originally published in Rat’s Ass Review, Fall 2020)

The Similarities

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

between you both are more Picasso
Pollack than Leibovitz     however
much I disengage    the Oculus will never
be Pennsylvania    though I have advanced
technology in my pocket    (I still have
the broken faces we captured)  I seek
the thin thread between real   what
I wish to be real   where I want to go
if time ever bends into black hole
I’ll head back home to Ohio and give
a hug to everyone    I somehow love
as an alarm    or Chekhov’s gun
telling   you are the people I still love
in the future you will reassemble into
magazine collage   and still resemble
the hummus-stained server in 2012

 

(originally published in Bindweed Magazine, Winter 2020)

Seesaw (California / Ohio)

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I wanted to be a wayward lasso,
to toss and be tossed.

Racetrack for the rainy season.
Horsetail-whipped.

Grieve not the slobbering mouth
of distance. I wanted a different

chance. Someone else,
or no one– there, entwined,

I’m sorry. You said there
was a way to make long

distance work and I was
no one in return but another.

Already, then, I was
galloping to the dark place

of convincing the pavement’s
otherwise steadiness. Did not

wish an earthquake to settle
my legs with falling,

so eager was I
to forget the other path.

 

(originally published in The Wax Paper, Spring 2020)

I’ve Been on a Bender Since Becoming an Adult

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

in the dark of grimy
bars floral couches live

feathers (what a thrill beneath
neon green) in view of Saint

Maria’s grand brick parish
I unclasp Catholicism’s hands

from my neck (backdrop always holy
human touch) how can one believe

in anything other than getting fucked
up loving people at parties

unconditionally my friends I have
forgotten too many nights not

to complete the circle offered
under guidance of compass

and an unsteady hand
flicking the lighter

(originally published in Incessant Pipe, Winter 2021)

Working the Cologne Department at Macy’s, 2010

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

My olfactory nerve already overflooded with Acqua di Gio
on business cards beneath fluorescents, I did not expect

to run into my first love in the wilderness of Black Friday,
where hard rain was people. I sought a higher ground– escalator

to the bathroom to text my crush on my TracFone, until the arms
on my watch contorted a certain way. But my tarot cards flipped

when I recognized Kristen from afar, both of us unsure,
unlike in fifth grade, on the bus to Mohican, she slept

beside me, her hair fire on my shoulder, strobe lights of a confused
adolescence that entire week. Camp ended when everyone

contracted poison ivy. How to scratch the mind until snapping
back into self– in that present, years later, I thought she might be

fate and, thus, planned a coffee date, but because I did not
carve the path I wanted to take, winter came. And went.

(originally published in Tipton Poetry Journal, Winter 2021)

Now That the End Is in Sight

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Our shared strength wanes–
vaxxed, we talk about the end
like a peek of sunrise through
the blinds. Yes, beyond
winter depression we just had
depression and didn’t know
it. Spring sun’s out and
we are outside drinking.
Kids graze by like
the virus never happened.
But I was there. I was
strong. Even as a kid,
finding my father crumpled
on the floor and convulsing,
eyes rolled to the back of his
head during his stroke,
I calmly dialed 911
and waited until the
ambulance arrived, and
I was fine the whole time.
But when my sister
screeched her SUV’s tires
into our driveway, I let
go. A lifeboat. I ran
into her arms, crying,
not knowing how to say
anything I wanted to say,
and she just held me
and said it’s going
to be okay– but she
didn’t know. This past
year, I’ve held you to tell
you it’s going to be okay,
but how could I know?
Now that the end is in
sight, we wait for the light,
wilting in its arms to meet it.

(originally published in Capsule Stories, Spring 2021)

Schizotrope

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Finale was the first program I used to
compose music, in eighth grade, back
when my concern was to score colorful,
simple role-playing games I had created
with RPG Maker 2000. A couple years
later, I used new software, hunched
in the dark of my mom’s living
room, toying with FL Studio’s virtual
equalizers, knobs, and keyboard to craft
Schizotrope, the name of the album
I wrote to process a breakup,
an attempt to conjure you through
some combination of melody
and soundfont. When I listen
now, I hear us both a kind
of cacophonous ghost. Back
then, it was simple to slip on
cheap earbuds and recede into
my childhood bedroom, where we
did what I thought– when growing
up– was growing up. So shifted the
trajectory of my songs. And speaking
again of early sex, I sang off-key into my
coffee-stained Hewlett-Packard’s built-in
microphone, made a MIDI sound
marginally authentic to gift myself, in
the future, reverberations of my coping.

 

(originally published in Artvilla: Poetry Life & Times, Fall 2019)

Highland Square

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

early decade of adulthood
the waning hours of youth
again at Zubs eating a
gourmet garbage sandwich
after rousing our wildness
at The Matinee a home
for scavengers raccoons
staring up at night into
the ether of everlasting
noise a comfort stuck
inside our guts like I
know it’s 3 AM I don’t
want to leave not now
until this moment I
cocooned inside my shy
quills alive in sensitive
jurisdiction I witnessed
within me a shooting
star on the verge of
traversing three
thousand miles of
plain songs to desert
you was not
cake I will stuff
myself sick hunch
over the toilet and
pray tonight tomorrow
I will be home

(originally published in Magnolia Review, Winter 2021)

Cedars-Sinai

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Vital signs at zero, a squiggly line gone infinity–
guess what I’ve prepared for. An eternity of this
nothingness. I tossed the phone like a grappling

hook at your distance and it caught. You left it
hanging on the bricks, though, and moved to
California, where I used to sleep the streets in

my Ford Fiesta, the same car we drove to Melt:
a time bomb heart attack. How close we were
back then, each deep-fried grilled cheese bite

hushed the thrumming. Fingers greasy– wiped
on napkins, wiped and wiped and wiped.

 

 

(originally published in Hedge Apple, Spring 2019)