covid-19

Now That It Is Safe to Go Outside

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

The contractors both my neighbors hired
may try to talk at me and what to do

then? Play normal? I have spent these solitary
days cataloguing the cotton candy no one

knows inside me. I try to get the gunk out
but it is sticky! Gigantic pink globules!

Therapy says all is okay in moderation–
or is that a nutritional idiom? Look,

loneliness drives toxicity to confession.
I polluted air around me for years and now

you want me to open my door to the world?

(originally published in Chronogram, Spring 2021)

Rollbacks

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

The American
disease: ills of

environmental overload
but these stings

are far more sophisticated
than thought

and soon we will
even overspend

on food all with a
residue at our plates

our heads will Ɵ∙∙∙ Ɵ∙∙ turn Ɵ∙∙∙
to the upcoming void Ɵ∙∙∙ our air Ɵ∙∙∙ Ɵ∙∙

(originally published in The Literary Heist, Winter 2021)

Gaze Down Not Eyes

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

skies are gray my mind
lives having dug through
refrigerator for the cookie
I thought Mark bicycled
more instead I went to
salami town I burnt
a hot dog yesterday
for backyard freedom
the weeds are cut
behind the wire
and we are paranoid
of visitors someone
knocked on our door
time turned to trickle
last week a snowstorm
somehow but I have not
witnessed any weather
in a while I avoid outside
and outside avoids
me we always have
had an awkward
wave as we both
put our heads down
then move quickly
another direction

(originally published in Subnivean Magazine, Winter 2021)

December, 2020

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I don’t have a new perspective.
Snow thaws on sidewalk beside
uncollected garbage. Half the city

workers are in quarantine yet
there are boxes to be shipped
for Christmas or our mothers’

birthdays. I drove on dew
streets to buy you bagels–
but stopped at the sight of

a long line to retreat into
the O of your arms in my
mind. Please park

your car next to mine.
We will sit in our usual
distance and wait for spring.

(originally published in Dodging the Rain, Winter 2021)

Some Crimson Planet

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

When I am lonely,
it helps to not think
of the universe. I imagine

Earth buried in the darkest
cemetery, a headstone
with some space separating

it from the next.
I know there must be a
tenderness quotient

in the cosmos, a rose
on some crimson planet
blooming tall to wave

at me, its petals drifting
aimlessly through
a garden of light-

years. This distance
is more collective
than we know.

(originally published in South Florida Poetry Journal, Fall 2020)

Precedent

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

The sound of fascism is for a small
while less intrusive than the work

in progress on your neighbor’s wall,
which is also yours. 7 A.M. drills,

hammers infiltrating space.
Sun crystals shining through

bathroom window might say fall,
could say end. Dracaena sitting

in darkness on a different sill
amidst loud nearby noises.

Gonna see my family for the first
time in months. Whose side are they

on? I squeeze the lavender
satchel handed down from not-

my-grandma. All was passed
down from stars, but that is

a different story. Eternal light
in dust. What disgusting precedent.

The disturbed mornings
in which simply drinking

coffee hurts the backside
of my lower lip. Fish flesh.

I don’t know why the liquid
slashes me. That’s why

I drink so quickly.

(originally published in mutiny! magazine, Summer 2022)

A Morning in Knox, PA – September 2020

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

can’t risk having you fall in
           it’s the same blue blood buzzing everywhere
a spider’s on my face and all I see is dusk
     and lavender cornfields
you would tell me  if (I made your)  birthday a ruin, right?
you’d come out of (your   hole in) the ground,
help me navigate through      pink-spiked weeds?
every step I take close     bullfrog leaping into    moss
to escape me   I get it   I don’t know if it’s my intention
misplaced or if my body’s just unable to execute
       the further I walk from the house a little more it rains
       moths displaced little insects winging away
       each further step I take toward the lake

(originally published in Ginosko Literary Review, Fall 2021)

Two Days Before Final Fantasy VII Remake, Bernie Ends His Campaign

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

    to play a game is to simply look into a void I need
    to limit the amount my eyes (or else the world’s
            but a buttercream) I dream I dream in pixels
            nostalgia of many Midgars transformed in what to partake
but all these riches of revolution memory is a waterfall
rushing headfirst cold into pointy rocks I wanted to forget this good
            game with you knowing neither of us could afford the new

(originally published in Marias & Sampaguitas, Summer 2021)

Before Coronavirus

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

We would shake hands in public but embrace
in private the kitchen counters I’d pour myself

a purple punch. Slung ear ice. Not much music
from the grass but songbirds chatter refrigerator

hum. My speedometer reached a hundred barren
roads leading to summer rooms. Fingerprints

everywhere. We touched everything tortillas
knobs ladles. We even touched each other’s

faces, then inhaled.

(originally published in Ginosko Literary Journal, 2021)