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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)

D.C.

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Weird seeing how we’ve changed. In sticky
bars we were tornadoes swirling into drunk
arms. After a certain date we spake change

living in the new blotted heart of darkness.
The horizon blessed us but looked to fade
fast. I write poems & you write legislature.

Do better, you tell me, still, though it is
your will. You walk from the shore of the
bleeding Atlantic to break the binding quill

of former centuries. There is no place for
hate here. Waves of black ink roiling in
for the storm. A comfort, this tornado.

(originally published in The Literary Nest, Spring 2019)

Transient

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I need new faces
clothes drawers
opening
closing

I used to find
spacious greens
county lines
my hometown

I wandered
through the smells
of mom’s scrambled eggs

faucet running
disposal clogged
with garlic

understand
I want to be
a bullet train
memory

I’ll tell my future grandkids
stop moving
opposite
of me

 

(originally published in Neologism Poetry Journal, Summer 2017)

*Pushcart Prize Nomination

Pool Party

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Yesterday we were at a pool party
attended by only a few others. It was
dog-friendly, as it was last week,
so the lone, small white dog
lapped water into his mouth
while on an inflatable raft and we
stood in silence and watched as he
drank the blue that held the specks
of fallen leaves and submerged spiders
while our beers turned warm. Last week
we were at a party in the same house
with a few of the same people but the
sun was out and I did not have to keep
wondering if you were okay, if you would
dip your feet into the clear with me and all
the people we did not know then because,
last week, a stranger in a bar did not yet
shake your body and bite you
long after you begged him not to–
no, the night before last week’s party
we danced to nineties hip-hop
inside the shadows of others until
we could not help but mine our
bodies for gold. Last week, we laughed
as the dog lapped the pool into his mouth
but watching, now, we know there are some
who force a tongue at whatever water
they see fit, how they lap and lap
until there’s nothing but a splash
of what they lapped at all.

 

(originally published in The Collapsar, Summer 2016)

Eat Your Face

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

You wanted to eat my face
just as seven A.M. south Oregon fog
conceals trees over a low valley.
I wanted the same of yours.

What you liked was the sky descended:
how you’re able to grip, fleetingly,
the mortal, shifting clouds–
to think, I have touched the untouchable.

Many pines, from a distance, can be held
by two fingers. We can choose to let them dangle
or hold
steady, steady…

The fog consumes and rises
while we watch the sun burn slowly west.

When the rain begins,
the soft pattering against the windshield
mimics the sound of your jaw
fake-chomping my cheeks–
nearly-inaudible clicks.

The speedometer oscillates
between sixty-five and ninety.

The hillsides change so suddenly
with every mile– shifting smiles hidden
by a fog you know will also fade.

 

(originally published in VAYAVYA)

*Nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Writing Knights Press in 2017