coffee shop

Insignificance

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I watch the line of people accumulate,
a metaphor in front of me. Because nothing

can exist without some deeper meaning.
How people walk in and out of my life

in this coffee shop and I obsess on
the butterfly effect. I occupy a table,

but there are five open tables. I drink
from a mug, but there are many mugs.

How can everything mean anything
in such insignificance? The chatter

grows louder. I need follow-up reports
for every single person who steps

inside while I am here, especially
those who look and leave quickly.

I need to know how my insignificance
becomes significant– a small gust,

somewhere.

(originally published in Toasted Cheese Literary Journal, Winter 2023)

For Once I’d Like to Hear You Over My Brain

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

The endless universe of this coffee-church
I blend into the ground, ground
anxiety into yours, I met you there, pit-

pattering footsteps I couldn’t stop
listening to. I asked myself
if this was a joke

the way only nervous nothing I said
to you.         Yah-yah-yah.
I am awake, I know

over this river I
Jesus-walk miraculously
you reach your hand

to me–
             cold, wet illness.
             Neither of us are

here.

(originally published in Academy of the Heart and Mind, Winter 2021)

At Crazy Mocha (Shadyside)

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I don’t know what you’re saying–
I was just baptized in sensory deprivation
saltwater. You took an Adderall

to live in your tornado of case papers,
clacking away at the keyboard buzzing
with school sentences I do not crave

to understand. From the speakers, jazz
dances uneven through honeyhive fluorescents
above us. I scoot my chair in closer

to the table, and there is a squeak either
from my movement or a clarinet falsetto.
Sometimes the world is synchronized;

sometimes a miracle I make excuses for.
I held the planet’s limestone on my neck
when I was afloat– it became weightless.

(originally published in RASPUTIN, Winter 2020)