dating

A Sale on eBay! A Newer Roomba!

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I am happy with my dumb robot vacuum
though I nearly clicked Buy Now
with PayPal credit, thirty-six dollars
over twelve months, which is a more
tantalizing mountain, in increments,
if that’s the route I want to go, though
there have been, in the past two months,
too many sudden changes in my life.
I am reinventing myself, forming
new habits– I make my bed each
morning now that you’re not there
still sleeping when I awake, and
shave my armpits when black hairs
unfurl around my arms. For a while
I have been a wild animal and you
asked who I am now last time
you were over, saying now that we are
not together, you have good traits,
which is a phrase to run through mind
I promised not to think about, but
it’s true, my date– the first after
our ending– asked what are your
goals for your time? And
I blanked, what are my goals?
I had already told her about poetry,
that I am always reaching
for meaning that isn’t there.
I answered I want to reclaim
myself, and she said that’s
a lofty goal, without knowing
what I meant. I don’t even
know what I meant, and that
has always been my problem.
And my allure. We sucked
down cucumber gin and
left each other. Hanging.

(originally published in The Indianapolis Review, Spring 2025)

Firenze

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

     open shutters overlook
   bells    umbrellas      energy
I    watch all day I am
  one pedestrian watch
              as        clock hands reach
slowly       one way                  up
to us which direction              walk
the bridge over the river
time the cobblestone path that
firms as marks hands gaff tape
on what slips                     this
plane this coil           weeks
     wanting not just this country
to last forever but what seeds
of doubt to be taken by wind
            stolen          by gnats
who sneak and fly into our space
if they could               digest what
we     put down plans to live
here in two years that cannot
come too fast it will arrive
a bullet         train when we are
sleeping on a humid night
in the                    future
                                        our
traveler bags                   brown
    and green     means
the forest meaning         opposite
of          open road if time
were this ambiguous than
I want nothing to do with it
but its hands are in everything
     bugs in the unfinished chianti
     drown        and            nothing
I can do to help
and I don’t want to
      drink   but I do

(originally published in The Round, Spring 2025)

The Billionaires

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

And if I didn’t want it?
I would have it. Look at

us– we are in love, long
grass abundant around us.

This should be enough
and you have it, what I want

you won’t give. What you want
I can’t do– not in my lack

of trying, but the extreme
wealth of it, the love we have

a mountain rising into fog,
the peak no longer visible

as I hook into my bootstrap
and you hook into yours.

(originally published in Dandelion Scribes, Spring 2025)

Does Freezing Salmon Before Cooking It Eliminate Parasites?

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I am done with dating
apps. I would like to make

you dinner: salmon, rice,
brussels sprouts. You said

you know what I want
for my birthday over a bed

of nigiri and leaves. I rolled
sushi once in a cavern

of doubt. I couldn’t stop
shaking. The nervousness–

I mean, the lust– grew
on your vines by

your side door.
We had your home

re-keyed, then there was
trouble with the locks.

Couldn’t keep the lovers out.

(originally posted in Discretionary Love, 2025)

The Inflatable Exhibition

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Maybe the installation was overrated–
the advertisements got us, inflated
the necessity of PVC in the center
of the city. It is August and I wanted
to see you for who you were and you
let me. Our shoes were off and
in the green shining light we were
vibrant. In the red we could not tell
each other apart from the screaming
strangers’ children, as indistinct
as silhouettes, palettes upon which
we draw the lines we see ahead; the vents
streaming air; the eighteen rooms we lost
ourselves in but not the sense of time,
which was kind of the point:
already we are labyrinths
so why pay to see
ourselves out? Not that we could
even. Had to find a blue GUIDE to point
us slightly in the direction of exodus,
another tube to lead us into the open
patio with the mobile bar selling
orange crush and cucumber vodka
with twenty other people seeking
air, or at least a chair
to sit, in which I am
wondering how close to sit
beside you? The answer
in the atoms wobbling between
us, the slight tilting of light.

(originally published in The Seraphic Review, Fall 2023)

Bottle

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

corkscrew splits when prying loose
coppola‘s aged cabernet sauvignon

you once opened a bottle in a hotel
with a flatiron i bring down a steamer

the bottle perspires with no release my cat
nearly walks into the heat i’m thankful you are

present my spine so soft can’t keep anyone
safe best not dwell my memories

are triglycerides clinging the tender
parts of brain we go downhill to rite-aid

we’re told it’s barren look elsewhere
a beer store closing the clerk in desperate

gasp seeks three screws he can use
to make a tool makeshift but alas

the shoe method works he says take
your boot pound with force try

as we might against my home’s brick no
way to get how we feel into the open

(originally published in RUNDELANIA, Fall 2024)

Stressful Music

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

The repetitive techno at Trace
squelches and invades my ears
I am just trying to drink
coffee and move on with
my life in an aesthetically-
pleasing way with green
plaid and rough jeans
but flies swirl
around my head and
I can’t stop thinking
of you starting your
new job at the hospital
and all I want is to hold
your hand again with
the fingers currently
pressing up against
the dust of keyboard
and the history of
my heart plugged
into the wall where
ghosts walk through
all hours and stay
in the dark until
the mud begins
to dry at the crust
of my shoes
in the warm
mornings

(originally published in Disturb the Universe, Summer 2025)

Facebook Dating

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Don’t you want to date everyone you’ve ever known?
Here’s a way:
I’ve got a secret
admirer. So do you
& you & you & you you you you you you you.
Your heart is an information superhighway
                               you’ve followed
                                to the Pacific, at least,
                                  & swam & swam & swam
                                       to be lost in blue
                                       endless scrolling
                                       you like & wow &
                                                                     love.

(originally published in Setu, Summer 2020)

Float

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Presently I am restless.
The television’s flickering
from the bedroom distracts
me from my mind’s reruns.
Last night, I learned to float
on my back for the first time.
It’s all about the ears, my teacher
said, but I am thinking about
her hands– how she held me.
My lower spine. Right leg.
The night before, on her couch,
our kneecaps sat a centimeter
apart, enough to receive each other’s
heat. I recalled a video in which
two water droplets in close proximity
refused to stop reaching for the other,
tirelessly wobbling until
losing strength. Perhaps we
both have been dating others for
too long, afraid of the aftermath.
In the pool, she let me float
into the purple dusk beneath
the bright, orange moon. I was
an egg unformed and drifting,
a body in transition shifting
wherever the pool dictated.
I cannot predict where shooting
stars appear in thin atmosphere air,
nor how far they’ll go, only that
they are doomed to disappear.

(originally published in Raised Brow Press, Summer 2020)

When you say exclusive do you mean we are alive alongside the only other life in the universe or

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

do you mean something else
because right now I am committed
to the rare magic of water its myriad

forms        fresh   salt    rain    ice
but don’t you go change too
much on me I feel so small

in the emptiness following days
without you   being in the pull
of your invisible gravity what

a dance to be so meaningless
years away from all other heat and
made of fragile things   carbon  dust

yet when I fart and sneeze through
the night I still have my body
and you intact in morning light

 

(originally published in former People, Winter 2020)