aw

Meat Trees

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

             This is a binding between nature and mankind
             unexplainable through philosophy. The trees
             want to reclaim us or, perhaps, themselves.
            -K. Santiago, “The Whispers in the Wild”

World Cup – athletes at their peak
when the affliction struck.

Crushed leaves in snot on tissue –
it’s nothing. I was Ubering people

around Columbus, heard the chatter.
Can trees grow in brains? Is the new

trend snorting deciduous?
I tapped the CNN app– first it was

a world-class saxophonist struck
down with a green cold.

Next, football stars from Paraguay
and Russia, all blowing chunks

of trees into white, softer trees.
The first doctor to log a patient

said it’s nothing to worry about.
After a week the test showed invasion:

prickly pines a long spine in the nose
and the headlines bleated MEAT TREES!

It was early morning in the haze
of dreaming when my nose dripped forest–

I wiped my hand across the stream,
the flecks of blossoms blooming.

 

(originally published in Cough Syrup Magazine, Spring 2020)

A Date with Doubt

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

You look around the room
and rate singles from one to ten
in terms of melancholy
but don’t know
how to rate yourself–
Pacific waves flow through
you almost drown
in the sea of your thoughts–
the scisms between pen and mirror,
heart and mind, these are thieves
who will lie to you ‘til the Greyhound
leaves for Cincinnati at 11:30.
Until then we watch superheroes do bad
stand-up comedy in the conference room
at the new Mikey’s, eating mushroom pizza
with too-hot sauce. Bass pounds from the stage
so loudly we walk to 16-Bit next door
to drink water and pretend we are drunk,
our mouths rocketships exploring the universe
of each other– the rotation of stars
confused with physics. In the end all you want
is chocolate cake. Your blue eyes curve away
in that soaring flyball-to-left way. The way
you sway me back to simpler times
when buying CDs was a holy act
of personal preference
and I stayed sealed on a shelf in plastic,
waiting to give the world my music.

 

(originally published in Zingara Poetry Picks, Summer 2017)

Athens, Ohio

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

The city was dead when we went
so we intended to fill ourselves
with black magic found
in skeletons on the street.

Look how roots of fallen
trees meld with earth.
Go where lines still meander
on your palms–

we did not share with ghosts
when we reached the end,
no words whispered into steam
of dim lights and Darjeeling,

no further graffiti for your blue
telescope eyes peering through time
to the origin of your cosmos, when
your essence poured from your sleeves

but carried less starlight than it does now.

 

(originally published in The Stray Branch, Spring 2018)

Warehouse Beach

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

The warehouse art gallery could never be mistaken for the beach,
even as curators charade sand across the dancefloor,
make us remember desire. Violins strike the throbbing air
with an electronic pulse, a horsehoof beat activating

the summer IPAs we drank beforehand to create
our summer selves. It ends. You end. At home later on
we watch documentaries where owls hunt forests for prey.
I pray we will soar but never hungry above branches.

Mostly I pray for our hearts to not be plucked raw, how stranded
and helpless we can feel in a new town while the world whirls
a thousand miles per hour– we stumble through sliding landscapes–
sand on concrete wails for sun, for sunset wind to whip

through industrial, unfinished interiors. We dance, or run,
until light draws herself from the ocean’s muted stone.

(originally published in Crack the Spine, Winter 2016)

Glass Chess

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I showed you how pawns function
on a glass chessboard

they sacrifice themselves to protect who they love

and what rooks and knights risk
in the modern age

there is a hierarchy in how to approach things

cigarette smoke permeated the wooden air
a phonograph streamed Brahms
I could never quite understand complexity

we sat on couch crumbs with our jeans touching

your friend gave me a rare Bahamian seashell
mottled with beige and caramel
I could not hear the ocean
no matter how hard it pressed against my ear

but with my head against your chest
I remember the beating tide

back then I was composed of sand

scooped whole by strangers hands
learning the gravity of myself
before dissipating

one day
I will build you a castle

 

(originally published in Walking is Still Honest, Summer 2016)