Denver

Colorado Hammock

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

we used to be musical soul
mates indie hipsters I guess
we got older I know we don’t
call Denver home in the thunder
storm under the oak by the nursing
facility it seemed good to call I
didn’t I lied to Andrew about
asking his mom to stay with her
he asked if I asked and I told him
I knew a place if he reads this
he won’t remember even now it
feels dreamed up like on a dark
Saturday evening in the feathery
backseat hammock of my Fiesta

(originally published in The Racket, Fall 2022)

Two Best Friends

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I skip pebbles in milk
while Colorado calls

my name an open field
prayer hands clasped

with two best friends
I have not seen

in years pass clouds
over the Rockies and I

am drunk staring at
my past blue yearning

the rain-drenched range
I write and ring cells

still new cities call
my name with headphones

on I play The Last of Us
in dark glow hands reach

for two best friends I sit
in silence happily

(originally published in Pennsylvania Bards Western PA Poetry Review, Spring 2023)

Instagram

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Denver’s volcanic sunset
from the parking lot
was a longing

nature
versus
Instagram

and while my traveling
resulted in a love
I cannot
recommend enough

I know it was you
who told me
it was time to leave
the ocean
when

memories
are too nostalgic
to be healthy

(originally published in The Magnolia Review, 2018)

Mia Khalifa

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Life imitates art in the way
memory imitates life– your face

reminds me of my last swollen
laughter held. Sometimes

there is no comparison– oh, we’ll rise
from geysers with sulphur still

in our fabrics– loose, blue threads
hanging at the maw.

We disassociate and wish
to converge into stars on a single strand

of light–
I remember that copper smell

of a new roll of pennies,
when fifty cents meant more than

being half of something
not quantifiable at all.

 

(originally published in Pouch, Issue #6)

Nomads

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I know you want to leave, to take a bus
out of Columbus, to fight your battle
in Seattle, or Denver, or wherever
your heart may lead–

to be a nomad is to go
where the landscape dreams,
and to scrunch it all in your hand
like wisps of dandelion in the wind,

and in your palm its feathery white
is dissolution–

however far you go, know those you meet
will occupy the rooms in the tiny hostel
of your heart, sharing wisdom and laughter
despite however many days we spend apart.

 

(originally published in The City Key, Spring 2016)