beer

Drinking a Rhinegeist Truth

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

10:33 AM on July 4th
                  & if that ain’t some
                  gunslinging fortune

     my drinks have teeth
                      can’t mix with coffee

I am trying to stay awake
                      I am trying to stay

a firework of politically conscious
colors

most mornings the soup of ritual

I gnaw at the aluminum’s tab
                      when my beer has ended

I am not satisfied
                            no
                                 I am not satisfied

with this ending

 

(originally published in Datura, Fall 2019)

Alcoholic Thoughts

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

It’s early and I
can’t fall back asleep– maybe, before work,
I can enjoy a beer or two.
                                          [I deliver food]

Cut to: work
It’s slow.
               Maybe I can sneak home
               and have a can in the car.

The depth of craving
                   I scoff and deny.

What keeps me going is each lap’s checkered flag–
if you can get to February, you can drink. [my partner]

Cut to: February [sober]
I don’t think we should drink.
We can wait another month.

It’s Saturday night and I have drymouth
and the house crawls with

bottles, chasers, faucets, an empty
champagne bottle on display on a table.

Such is a trophy. Gold-adorned
bubbly. I can tell you the kind
of night it was that drank it:

ordinary.

I was how I was.
Who can I become?

 

(originally published in TreeHouse: An Exhibition of the Arts, Summer 2019)

Cocktail Hour in the Wardrobe Department

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

because Greg today got inducted into the Academy
downstairs at work they say drink as much as you
want this quiet wild hour of comatose fluorescents
after the first champagne they mention the blue
cooler stocked with ice-cold IPAs & I know I will
reach into the frigid cell & corkscrew open a Doghead
with these incorporated strangers I have come to want
to know & if there were an Oscar for spills I would
by now be adorned in gold instead of wishing
for potential future accomplishments to seep in
like rivers running opposite directions to form
a body instead of letting anxious moths eat me
from inside perhaps I’m ready to be removed
from this rusting rack so reality can tailor me

 

(originally published in Goat Farm Poetry Society– Edges Zine, Winter 2019)

Another Drunken Summer

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Last summer, clunks of glass,
grapefruit juice across the veiled
table. We stayed drunk

through sweltering June, to cool
off with Bella Sera pinot grigio,
Tostitos, queso. How much is

too much pleasure? These half-
empty days of water we are
not eager to drink. Sit in shade

til sundown, table umbrella up
to block the cancer sun we
know. We know.

(originally published in Kissing Dynamite, Spring 2018)

Diffusion / NBA Finals, 2016

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Pacing around the bar crowd, watching
the Cavaliers transfer heat to one another through
bullet passes around invisible perimeters, Kurt

and I keep drinking the strangers toward us.
“Gaseous diffusion,” he offers. “Alcohol
is only molecules bumping into each other.”

Our bodies generate more heat with every swig,
the atmosphere tense but warm through
our gullets. We chug chaos in the blur,

invite a thousand basketballs to bounce up
and down halfcourt. The players don’t notice
our dribbled words in soundwaves processed

a million different ways in the space between
earlobe and brain. Endlessly the spectators
chant go to sleep because no one we want

to talk to wants to talk to us, our zigzagged steps
combining with the sound of a team on the verge
of climbing a challenging mountain though

the peak is steep so we try nothing more
but the drinks that keep us moving. To stop
would be to hear the room’s haunting cheer.

 

(originally published in The Drunken Llama, Fall 2018)

Frosted Flakes

/ James Croal Jackson / 1 Comment

To curb today’s desire
to drink, I part the
lips of a childhood
friend– Tony the Tiger
on cardboard blue–
and rip the bag
to snow
a bowl of corn
and white.
Nintendo used
to be my fix,
controller gripped
through loud
and colorful
screens
until the light
of morning.
And when I
started drinking
I didn’t think
one day
I’d need
to stop.
I eat
bowl
after
bowl
until
I
pour
the

d

u

s

t

.

(originally published in Goat Farm Poetry Society – Edges Zine, Winter 2019)

Profile Pictures

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

It was easy
in college
for every profile pic
to be a drunk photo
smiling. Beer cans
in hands in a bar,
at the beach,
in a house, in
a car. We were
all young and
happy
thinking us
adults. Legally,
sure, yes.
We were.
But the me
in those photos
wasn’t thinking
about bills
the endless
stack of debt
I still cannot
afford.
Of which
I was
in those moments
accumulating.
Like snow clouds
beckoning
over Lake Erie
I hoped would
cancel class
so I could drink.

 

(originally published in Wilderness House Literary Review, Fall 2018)

Two Guys, Two Gallons of Yuengling, Two Plastic Jugs, and a Third Arrives Later with a Six-Pack of Yuengling

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I call it renewal
a friendship vow, any vow

though I’m just as lost
as last time, in the playground

climbing green dinosaurs
to shouts of no, don’t, you’ll hurt

yourself but we didn’t, taking
photos of the dirt by the river

from the top. Held our jugs
like the Stanley Cup to declare

our air and crawled back down
through time and space to lumber

outward through the neighborhood
to eternity which is one warm drink

we have in our hands. To accomplish
nothing is something special. I have

felt the lukewarm heat of tongue last
longer than this. I waited years for

something extraordinary to occur.
In my memory we last eternal.

In my memory we are whole, sober,
on the cusp of happiness.

 

(originally published in The Los Angeles Review of Los Angeles, Summer 2019)

Death, 2009 (College)

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Flowers & God–
you tell me, slipshod,
there’s an afterlife
in the party we’re cheersing
to tonight our whole life
with small glasses of Granddad’s,
noisemakers, & drinking
games. I’d like to drown
the tissues
in something, listen to Gaelic
music like Dad used to
driving us from school with Pizza Hut
wafting from the trunk those
sunny afternoons. & now that you’ve
lost someone you’re willing to lose
your Bill Hicks-views-sense-
of-self-meaning like we all
funnel ethereal spirit into sky
& swig the rain with
drunken angels I know
you know you’re better than that.
I know you know once
the last attendee’s passed out
on the couch heavy breathing
lips purple you’d check
on him, too. You’d be alone
in the house you grew up in
with phone in your hand
calm and through the static of 911
racing to get the address out
the foaming of your mouth
and when a cop comes you
beg please don’t break this party up
and deny the red flashing lights
come

 

(originally published in 8 Poems, Summer 2018)