columbus

A Sustained Sound of Longing

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

My heart– a poem, a bass line audible
in Cleveland. You’re in the Heights now,
further away than ever, but it’s fine. I left

you first & felt a sapphire tinge in every
step. How always we wrapped
our bodies in caution tape

tangled in each other anyway.
I couldn’t drive a straight line,
couldn’t speak without stumbling

into potholes leapfrogging the walk
to your apartment on North High.
Inside, your dog was on a leash,

wagging his tail at a ghost
he could not know.

(originally published in Poetry Salzburg Review, Summer 2023)

I Want You to Think of Me All the Time

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

My partner says I want you
to think of me all of the time,
leaving knick-knacks: glow-
in-the-dark stars on the ceiling,
Miami Collection Post-Its,
a mylar balloon unicorn

that is thriving. She props it
on my lamp so it’s in my face
when I need more light. A kawaii
bumper sticker on my iPhone.
Hand-drawn cards in the drawer.

But I see tumbleweeds of dog hairs
and dust in the corners on the floor.
I find strands of your black
hair in my beard. I leave

last week’s dishes for not-my-present
self to find and when I see the balloon
on the lamp, I get it: you know
what keeps me going.

(originally published in Tower Poetry Society, Spring 2023)

Falling Rock

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

As soon as a stone (from where,
who knows?) cracked my wind-
shield during a delivery I quit

my job as a driver. I zagged
right from the highway’s
middle lane to the median

and set the car in park,
but could not control my thoughts–
chest throbbing, engine thrumming.

I had to step out and breathe
before I could convict the
quartz intending to harm me.

All smooth and small, I was not
sure which was the right rock,
scanning gravel to see several

similar enough. But the wolf
among them, I know, wanted to
break the glass, blind me

and puncture my jugular, only
for me to be saved by a surgeon
who would never fully believe

the story. I avoided death this time,
alive on the side of the road, looking
back in search of a falling rock sign.

(originally published in Bond Street Review, Winter 2021)

Now That You Are Engaged

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

       I refuse to believe
a word you told me. We talked home
movies by your bedside lamp
       and shared a feather pillow.
Don’t talk to me about the fate
of birds when morning comes and all
       I hear is silence. Then I listen a
little longer and hear your soft breathing
I know you’re faking. You don’t sleep,
       I didn’t either. The absinthe on your
breath meant we lived long enough
to forget another night. How could
       we forget a lesson like that?

(originally published in Sweet Tree Review, Winter 2023)

Continents

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

You say I love your face and I love yours
though it can be hard to know the blur,

the amber nights swished with vodka
tonic straw. I had the option to

leave, but you kept me here when I was
cold and afloat, warmed with handmade

bonfire. I drift across the vast Atlantic,
feel tectonic pull after all its pushing,

a broken chunk of earth adrift– don’t we
wait for the current to tell us where to go?

I’ve waited and waited through Pangaea
-esque ruptures I wanted to stop– but

still you kissed my cheek and said
forever we will be interconnected.

(originally published in The Post Grad Journal, Winter 2024)

A Poetry of Place

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Because Tony once said he knew
Columbus and Los Angeles the way I do–
I have not yet developed a poetry of
place for Pittsburgh. Three years in and
still the surprise hills, the way I always
feel– still– an outsider wending my way
through confusing streets. I’ve worked with
Kailee’s dad longer than I lived with Paige
and still we haven’t had a deep conversation.
Everywhere I go there remains a sense of some
thing deep that needs explored. The way
I walked Los Angeles streets at night–
the endless sprawl– must be the same,
but Pittsburgh’s smaller, the graffiti
more familiar, how it’s all a sketch of home.

(originally published in Vilas Avenue, Winter 2023)