art

Piss Christ

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

At Tango there’s a half-full bucket under the urinal
yet no one wants to talk about Piss Christ at the
dinner table. It’s the eve of Christmas Eve and
you tell me my family is your family. I don’t
want to eat the bucatini anymore. The short
rib in grease is a clog the whipped ricotta
is trying to lubricate down my gullet.

*

We don’t want dessert at Grandpa’s. The
cookies are rolling stones and I can’t
mention Piss Christ. Everyone sits in
a circle and talks accomplishments.
The architect, the dancer, the lawyer.
My name is in the credits of a movie.
Who cares? No one can talk about
drowning.

*

Everyone talks about wanting Yang Ming,
but it shut down. Because of the rats and
flies and spider webs and black mold
and uncovered fruit and the workers not
washing their hands after trips to the toilet.
I want to go, too. Seems like a great place
to talk about Piss Christ.

*

On Christmas morning we open presents
and Liz mentions a chef from China she
wants to reconnect with, but his restaurant
closed. She’s not sure what part of China
he’s from, or even the spelling of the place.
This spurs talks of other defunct restaurants,
which returns us to Yang Ming. Michael
mentions the urinal at Tango with the half-
empty bucket beneath. Of course I snapped
a photograph. Of course I show everyone.
Mathew says this reminds me– what’s that
piece of art? And I respond Piss Christ!
But everyone’s thinking of Duchamp’s
Fountain, and we all take another bite
of the home-fried bacon and golden
scrambled eggs, seeped in a tradition
that will seemingly last forever.

 

(originally published in Harbinger Asylum, Spring 2020)

You Leave to Make Art in the South

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

      humid
          green
        swamps
    a riverflow
  of talent
      the sediment
         of the world
             gone well
                   past
                 my flaws
                   I wish
                 still for contact
             this accident of
          longing a lesson
       in how not to be alone
                    through the lens
                              of canvas

(originally published in Erothanatos, Spring 2020)

Self-Isolation (Day One, March 14, 2020)

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Hands are raw from cheap soap
and scrubbing. We’re jobless now
so here’s the sink full of
better times we’re rinsing.

Let’s rearrange the living
room, drag the couch
from the side wall
to the back wall,

place the coat rack
in a different dusty corner,
treat the TV like
the god it wants to be.

There will be many
forms of worship,
this distancing.
Books. Cooking.

Writing. Pining.
Finally, I have time
to make music
and poetry but

I can’t put my phone
down– notifications
for each cog of society
as it breaks down.

You ask
should we hang
art on the walls?
I ask, what art?

 

(originally published in American Writers’ Review, Summer 2020)

Multimodality

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

too many avenues to take
to achieve              [what]?

goldfisted, I punch Jupiter
through the rings
I’m bound to. a racetrack

this zipline I cling
to the forest not the tether
nor the trees many

branched and beholden
to gravity I seek
to lunge headfirst

through the brush
renewal in sharp
sticks and scrape

the surface of
what composes me

(originally published in Ginosko Literary Magazine, Winter 2021)

Fake Pollack

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Acrylic in my head paints on canvas a monstrosity
the glut of guitars plucked and discordant my ganglia
a jumbled mess of math wrong equating crystals and string

circus a battle with the world its perspective a plane upside-
down on the runway screaming into sky oh I love who I love
and that’s the mallet rolling down the xylophone until the rot

an explosion at the end with upright bass scaling up
intensity while the sine waves crash against the shore
to counter the tide tolling against the whistling sand

 

(originally published in The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Winter 2020)

Sketches of Buildings

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Happy to finally be introduced, you said I’m proud of this architecture.
It’s true– your sketches are exquisite. In the gallery, your large displays

of heart-shaped buildings: blueprints of love in metaphorical forms.
A while ago, when I was lost and new (and you were, too), I knocked at

your door and the day led us to a festival, a sunny ninety. We drank
lemonade and walked with sour-sweet lips as ghosts through strangers.

It didn’t work out, us, but we’d see each other at shows and you’d ask me
when you’d meet my partner. Next time, I’d say, like I was ready to build

something new from the crumbles my desire likes to leave, how
to draw these ashes shapes for someone new to admire.

(originally published in where is the river, Winter 2021)

Deciduous

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

     organ of the trees ring
                                             the heart’s synthetic beating

         the stepstep crunch
                                               of leaves a drumbreathe

                  tenderly

 

                the forest i lose
                              me          the eye leaves

 

       somewhere someone sees me

                                                        whose real
                                                                             branch

                                              of body

 

                                     how corporeal the limbs
                               these purple nights return

 

(originally published in Kettle Blue Review, Fall 2018)