Distraction

January 10, 2025April 4, 2023 / James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

When the pain becomes
knives, you– bent over
by the mirror, clutching
your abdomen– straighten
your hair, put on make-
up. Beautiful people
get treated better. That’s
a fact, you said as I
drove. This is our third
ER trip in three days,
and today, finally, the
trauma team identifies
the piece of you that
needs removed. After the
diagnosis, I notice the sterile
painting on the wall.
A field, and what little
it contains. I talk–
an attempt at distraction–
imagine this being the last
piece of art a person ever
sees. Brush-stroked
delphiniums in the
grass, swaying,
the lake then light-
house that ascends
into blue. You look
for a long time.

(originally published in In Parentheses, Winter 2022)

There’s not enough insect imagery

September 6, 2024January 11, 2023 / James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

in my poetry where are the bugs where
are the bugs hiding everywhere cock
roaches lurk beneath heaps of clothes
on the white bathroom tiles I turn on
the faucet and divine water sprays
from the shower head please scrub
the itching away the dermis micro
cosmic atoms creeping along the
ridges of my bodyhairs I know
behind the curtains what’s inside
the peels of avocados and apples
dead wing meat flecks my tongue
will lash at colonies in the cracks
of my kitchen poison in the paint
on walls to drop the husks into
the milk of my daily routine
in and out of bed the wind
a centipede its many legs
sing bristles on my skin

(originally published in Madness Muse Press, Fall 2020)

If a Body Is a Temple

July 29, 2020May 13, 2018 / James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Pray to clogged brick, hardened
breathing. When I was young,
I believed in God and my mother
had good food waiting after school.
Rice and chicken, spinach
and pepper at the bottom of a soup.
Boiling then, now I drink water
in mason jars to wash away cheddar-
topped hot dogs I ate in some
destruction of the work Mom
put into me to get me here–
how she unclasped her hands
when I left for LA, let me fly
down the highway of fickle dreaming.
There was light at the end of that;
there’s a light at the end, still.
Now the intangible light swarms
my world, and I am too selfish
in my gluttony to eat it–
how a body can be full of light
but radiate a shadow of another,
one you had no part of in the making.

(originally published in Hessler Street Fair Poetry Anthology, Summer 2018)

Kimmy Granger

December 1, 2019February 4, 2018 / James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

The green blanket over your head–
Kimmy Granger gets fucked
by a fake photographer
on your iPhone in my hand.
Meanwhile, you ride me, moaning–
it’s snowing– December’s waning
autumn days– awaiting a kind of fate
under flicked-off lights
in the gray of afternoon.
Before this, we reminisced about
the early days– laying in bed my hand
in your hair listening to music.
Then late July laying in grass saying
the ways we make each other happy.
Which is why I must rewind this clip
over and over to the part where Kimmy
is smiling and laughing before
the whole thing starts and
I pine for the blanket, your
green thread and lint.

(originally published in Ghost City Review, Winter 2018)

Submerge

August 18, 2019January 21, 2018 / James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

From oneness: two, three, four.
Shadows through doorways.
Breath from water. Surface

bubbles, rippled sighs. The ocean
dried, became a city. Marine lights.
Pearl buildings. Skyscrapers so

old you can see the way the
world will end.
No one knows the space they occupy.

We fade in water. We fade
in air. We fade in living,
drown in life.

(originally published in Zany Zygote Review, Winter 2018)

Models

February 27, 2019October 15, 2017 / James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

You cut my face
from a magazine,
pulled tanner grass
in L.A.– how you
lose your sense
of color with nothing
but blue sky and sun
and sidewalk cigarette
stains, everyone dead
in their own way.

(originally published in Califragile, Fall 2017)