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What We Talk About When We Talk About

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Pepper burned my mouth
and all I could think of
in that salivated flame
was you telling me your tongue
no longer felt the heat
of a moment: meaningless
sex– bite and garment
here between the green
walls of your zen room
your small goldfish
swimming in circles–
submerged flame and hunger
for love so intense
I flicker poems to you
thumbs on lighters
waiting for the matchbook
to catch– combed pomade
hair, designer jeans, and wit–
what I want is origami
and fire– instead
we talk about love
but unlike Raymond Carver
we have nothing
more to say.

 

(originally published in Words Dance, Summer 2017)

The Kansas City Royals Cope With Loss

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

A river isn’t really blue. The Mississippi
has dried, and even love is transparent.

We adorn ourselves blue so loss
can be quantified in color. Such

is the brittle paintbrush, naked
and grieving, but we are not

the color of grieving,
nor tobacco spat in the dugout

in shame. We remember
the dirt, and who we loved,

long before we searched
clouds’ faces for ghosts,

her grays in the white
within eternal blue.

 

(originally published in ‘the vacant hinge of a song’, courtesy of Origami Poems Project)

Cicadas

/ James Croal Jackson / 2 Comments

The cicadas come at night, after you
fall soundly in the trance of your booklight,
buzzing pages. Forget, there’s no undo.
The cicadas come at night,

arriving several years apart despite
love’s hindwings clung to bark whose heart is true.
We burrow in those pages craving sight

and air and words– we gather in droves to
kiss your hand though you think it is a bite.
We wait years and always return to you.
The cicadas come at night.

 

(originally published in The Road Not Taken, Summer 2016)