Birthday

Wildwood

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Let’s go to Wildwood and get lost in
the rough waves of September. Stand
further from shore than ever, where
water’s shallow, sand firm though
fine enough to spiral into thoughts
where its strength dissipates and you
sink into a rough wave. Sometimes
what you need is to be pummeled by
the Atlantic. If you are not careful,
you could drown, but in the cerulean
calm of caesura, waves break all
around and forgive you. When
it is offered you want the air frigid
in the warmth of your sequence
of days so it can thrash the
fragileness of body and you will
not know what you have craned
your neck for. You’ll pull out
binoculars to view onlookers
on a distant, speeding sailboat
and you will see your life,
how fast it will pass.

(originally published in Stink Eye Magazine, Fall 2022)

Cookie Cake

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I cut cookie cake with plastic butterknife
a birthday my age is showing not my celebration
in the office a long way to the center I repeatedly

say I slice some New York pizza I shape
a biscotti I am the awkward focal point
struggling through the cake rock my boss

offers me a Swiss army knife I refuse
she swears it’s clean the PEOPLE want
a show they want to see struggle I

bellow hands shaking through thick paper
plate after plate she says I’m impressed
you didn’t break and my piece is

so sweet I can barely eat I
do it anyway the work
I put in deserves dessert

(originally published in Squawk Back, Fall 2022)

A Morning in Knox, PA – September 2020

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

can’t risk having you fall in
           it’s the same blue blood buzzing everywhere
a spider’s on my face and all I see is dusk
     and lavender cornfields
you would tell me  if (I made your)  birthday a ruin, right?
you’d come out of (your   hole in) the ground,
help me navigate through      pink-spiked weeds?
every step I take close     bullfrog leaping into    moss
to escape me   I get it   I don’t know if it’s my intention
misplaced or if my body’s just unable to execute
       the further I walk from the house a little more it rains
       moths displaced little insects winging away
       each further step I take toward the lake

(originally published in Ginosko Literary Review, Fall 2021)

Hog

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

there is no wrong way to eat
a hot dog there is no right
to eat a dog there is no hot
dog hot popsicle of pig
meat slathered in existential
ketchup bread-claustrophobic

                                                                    *

         once on a drive home from Central Catholic
         I stopped at the Dairy Queen Drive-Thru
                 and asked for hot dog wrapped in lettuce
                 I was more hypochondriac at sixteen
                 than at thirty-two anyway the kid
                 at the window said they couldn’t
                 but I insisted and the manager
                 smuggled the long sizzling dog in wet
                 lettuce I carry that shame in the trash
                 bag of my trunk to this day

                                                                    *

        pig meat
                       pig meat
                                       in a sleeping bag of green

                                                                    *

        there is no way to eat a dog
        there are ways to eat a hot dog
             I am a bog I am the bog I am
breakfast lunch dinner brunch midnight snack
  everlasting bun communion holy
water life I down through days and lick my fingers
after rough vigorous handwashing
               I’ve opened plastic package
               set skillet to flame
               lain logs on drizzled oil

                                                                    *

                       the celebrity chef in my mind
is me I documented cooking when I lived
in my car. That was my true potential. Oh, swine,
               you’re years beyond capable
yet I drove halfway across the country
to do what competitors do, which is down
hundreds of you. Joey Chestnut the undisputed
master after decades of dogs.

                                                                    *
                    Went to a dollar dog minor
                    league game twenty cents per dog flies
                    buzzing in orbit of condiments
                    five the limit at the window so all
                could see I had the buns. One each for
                     STRENGTH. ACCEPTANCE.
                        CONFIDENCE. GRACE.
                                   AMBITION.

                                                                    *

One inning was all
it took and I was alone in my new
                        city full of my father’s love
                        of baseball and barbecues. Now
                        there was an undisputed grill master.
                        Everyone knows one. I am not one.
                        There is no way to cook.
                        There is a way.
               Wayne was over and we flicked
               lit matches with our middle fingers
               from thumbs into ready
               charcoal to get the grill going.
We walked away and waited for
an action-movie explosion
but there was no ignition.

                                                                    *


                                                                                     My whole life I have been walking
                                                                                     away, not turning back to look.

(originally published in HAD, Summer 2022)

Starbucks

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

you stepped in dog
poop on your birthday
but still had a good birthday
we walked through windchimes
off golden sidewalks
& drank a vat of black coffee
free from a corporation
so desperate for your loyalty
all our other friends
reached into their pockets
to blow out their rewards, too

(originally published in The Daily Drunk, Winter 2021)

I Try to Keep Your Ice Cream Cake Cold

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

It is eighty-two degrees in Pittsburgh and my trunk
is crammed so your DQ cake sits in the passenger seat,

moves the same speed I do in my car in this orbit
in this galaxy. There is so much matter to keep cool

in the universe, but there’s sunshine through my wind-
shield and you– I know– thaw as a passenger beside

me. I’m doing what I can: aiming all the frigid vents
that way, holding a folder to shade you. I drive fifty-

five in a thirty-five to avoid my mind entertaining a
milky flood mixed with dust, dog hair, cookie crumbs,

and lust pooling where you are, your name in icing
illegible– it’s fine, for now. Don’t freak out. I am

floating over a bridge, the sun forever taunting,
and soon I know you’ll go, in one way or another,

into the mouth of a thankful person– whether me,
trying to save you from this heat, or you, radiant

as the sun, seeing celestial bodies who– for at
least this rotation– you know revolve around you.

 

(originally published in Dodging the Rain, Spring 2020)

Shut the Freezer Door

/ James Croal Jackson / 1 Comment

I am frozen in a block of ice
stuck in the absolute zero
of time how it’s rushing
water slowed down into
frozen eternity I mean it’s
my birthday today yesterday
& tomorrow being young
within universe expansion
transient in desire to shift
across continents & eras
what I want is to be known
past murky ice the good parts
melted out into a messy bowl

 

(originally published in Visceral Uterus, Spring 2018)

Weekends

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

You said it was your best birthday weekend ever.
You sang on stage in a large bar surrounded by friends.

When we turned our bodies into rhythm, pulsations,
and streamlines, the physical elements of snow and rain–

of kisses outside in blowing wind, and people honking,
winnowing by, I wondered about unicycle riders, the way

they wheel tall along sidewalks, straight-thin razor
cutting sound– their legs in cycled motions suggesting

let’s drag this out until we can’t

 

(originally published in Home Planet News Online, 2017)