apartment

Copley Place

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

always sing-song through cacophonous crush
            living – divorce drugs rising sea

in your tiny upstairs apartment you recommended me self-
help
            and to your pug, too

before we walked through an abandoned train
in the rain    kissed in the presence
            of four-tiered mahogany

totem pole   eight eyes surveillance for us   was
the summer I was temporary on this earth

I could arrive on a plane   share a maple blondie
at the Earth Fare’s café      and go to your unfurnished

Copley place   my ego was a red giant   of course I’d go
supernova    become a noble gas    Narcissus

needed others stars to become a constellation
           and vast darkness

(originally published in Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo, Spring 2024)

Hudson

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I left your place with nothing
to say to the paper skeleton
hanging on your door. Walked
the street in old, browned
loafers to meet other friends,
no celebrations to celebrate.
Your birthdays always pass
without fanfare. I see ribbons
in you when you do not.
Candles, cake, club
music. Striating lights
to spotlight, embrace,
then the world– its
countless, colorful
ribbons– would spin
around us, give you this.

(originally published in Across the Margin, Summer 2020)

Duplex

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

the muffled songs
made me wonder
who played violin
on the other side

who cradled the bowstring
whose long haunting moans
whispered my name
in its dried throat
beyond the wooden wall
who itself whispered
its own ghosts
its dead fingerprints

are clamoring
to live again

 

(originally published in The Bond Street Review, Summer 2017)

East Through California

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I argue with the music in my car again
those rock’n’roll pots and pans clanging
in the soup kitchen of my imagination
the Steel Reserve of my rumba rumblin’
stomach unfilled from Maruchan ramen

really I’m running from anything but home:
in the apartment of my car the desert’s
a sandstorm of faulty A/C and mountains
obscuring the view of my future and
there’s nowhere else to go but here

 

(originally published in Outcast Poetry, Spring 2017)

Runner

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

You always have to run.

Short North to downtown,
city to city, Indiana

to Tennessee–
one shoe on gravel,

the other careening
through time and space

into a green
where you are unknown

and your running shoes are empty
at our red swing’s feet.

I know you never run to leave,
driving your horizon eyes

miles to sun– and you, after its setting,
glide beside each highway’s unlit rivers

on the bridge of the median, drunk
from driving so long under moon,

far from where our empty bottles
collect in a skyward infinity,

a mountain of clinking memories–
a marathon, a gap traversed quickly.

(originally published in VerseWrights)

10514 National Blvd

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

the couch a forlorn slinky
stagnant. f-stop set to zero. focus:

predestined flickering lights
where dreams meet swan
matches and peel, lit & untethered

jaunty flows
the air beneath
the vacant couch

warrior of staleness & mildew

ambassador to dust-covered curtains–

shards of dreams
in beams of sun
stream into the room; at least
what is breathed, what can be seen
through blinds in deep sleep–

 

(originally published in VerseWrights)