drunk

Zone 28

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Tara, the arcade was not the answer
(air hockey shots & bowling)   such
fantastical surrendering     with hollow
hunger     & the terrapin match /
between dinosaurs Maureen was
drunk & screaming. typical
punch bowl.    red & strung
with lights I lied about my blue
ice I said     I did not have enough
but I drove to Taco Bell next door
& ate five soft ones     texted
you I made it (though I live somewhere
different now)    home    if I move
how will the wind know
the difference?

(originally published in DREICH, Fall 2023)

Shirtless in Goodale Park

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I swing my shirt
around like a lasso
at the community
festival
when you walk by
my sunburnt torso
and stop
to ask how I have been.
Last month
we hung out
in circles
before I confessed
and we got dizzy.
When you exit
the conversation,
I drink
myself onto
a patch
of clumped grass
wishing
our shirtlessness
together was
a more organic
situation,
but everyone
here is shirtless.
We are all half
naked in the sun
hoping for another
chance.

(originally published in Poetry Super Highway, Summer 2022)

After

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I want more– god,
our nights on the patio
are memory’s reruns.
I want it back: you,
your hand secretly
caressing my chest
beside the dead firepit.
Everything. You asked
to craft me a drink
with Firefly whiskey.
You made it strong
& asked if I could
withstand this. No–
I’m weak. Each kiss
that night, your lips
sudden, brief– through
the crowd we looked
for each other, making
a game of running
around the kitchen island
to never catch the other,
but how close we were
to giving our all. This
close to telling you
I never could get over
you. But here’s
a chance to start.

(originally published in EgoPHobia, Summer 2021)

Shots

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

At the bar, I ask if you want shots.
You say, no– 2X, so I ask is that Dos
Equis? We laugh, then you tell me

2X is an IPA from Southern Tier.
When I order PBR you fire back
I don’t do that shit anymore.

At our table you lean into me,
staring at the red, paint-splattered wall.
You say I went to school with someone

who was killed in the shooting last
weekend. I think– there were two–
then ask if you’re okay. You

cock your hand on my thigh
and lift your bottle to toast me–
our clink of drinks a cold hard

cheers to the body of a rifle.
The skin through the holes
in our ripped jeans is heavy

against each other. You whisper in my ear
the world has too many people.
You shoot to the opposite

side of the table and ask,
how many people have you had sex with
who are dead? I say none that I know of.

And knowing you want me
to ask you, too, I mouth,
you?

Your smile loads a magazine,
amber bullets in your eyes–
you flash me the peace sign.

(originally published in Red Eft Review, Summer 2020)

I do not want to sleep I want to get smashed

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

but I fall asleep it is Friday my youth
is waning. Please tell me every time
you want me there. I love to say I
will think about it. And I will. To
feel if the sun will warm the air
enough to drink gallons the death
of me. I want you to nail me
down I want to stay in bed I want to
surround myself with hanging lights
and loud whiskey-drinkers and dance
around smashed Bud Light bottles
gleaming with the force of recent
desire– someone leaving their
own temporal body, someone
leaving their wallet behind,
someone leaving the world
so damn lonely now.

(originally published in RASPUTIN, Winter 2020)

Transition

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I walk this familiar street
of spring. Cherry blossoms,

sunshine, the desire
to drink. Yesterday

I snuck into a field
with a flask to avoid

the knife room I
tell myself to stay

out of. My longing a black
rolled-up rug. I tell myself

Stay wound, trying how
I can before I let again

the drunk in me to walk
through the door,

spill me out in scuff
marks and mudprints

just after the rain.

 

(originally published in Penmen Review, Summer 2019)

Diffusion / NBA Finals, 2016

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Pacing around the bar crowd, watching
the Cavaliers transfer heat to one another through
bullet passes around invisible perimeters, Kurt

and I keep drinking the strangers toward us.
“Gaseous diffusion,” he offers. “Alcohol
is only molecules bumping into each other.”

Our bodies generate more heat with every swig,
the atmosphere tense but warm through
our gullets. We chug chaos in the blur,

invite a thousand basketballs to bounce up
and down halfcourt. The players don’t notice
our dribbled words in soundwaves processed

a million different ways in the space between
earlobe and brain. Endlessly the spectators
chant go to sleep because no one we want

to talk to wants to talk to us, our zigzagged steps
combining with the sound of a team on the verge
of climbing a challenging mountain though

the peak is steep so we try nothing more
but the drinks that keep us moving. To stop
would be to hear the room’s haunting cheer.

 

(originally published in The Drunken Llama, Fall 2018)

Profile Pictures

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

It was easy
in college
for every profile pic
to be a drunk photo
smiling. Beer cans
in hands in a bar,
at the beach,
in a house, in
a car. We were
all young and
happy
thinking us
adults. Legally,
sure, yes.
We were.
But the me
in those photos
wasn’t thinking
about bills
the endless
stack of debt
I still cannot
afford.
Of which
I was
in those moments
accumulating.
Like snow clouds
beckoning
over Lake Erie
I hoped would
cancel class
so I could drink.

 

(originally published in Wilderness House Literary Review, Fall 2018)

Two Guys, Two Gallons of Yuengling, Two Plastic Jugs, and a Third Arrives Later with a Six-Pack of Yuengling

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I call it renewal
a friendship vow, any vow

though I’m just as lost
as last time, in the playground

climbing green dinosaurs
to shouts of no, don’t, you’ll hurt

yourself but we didn’t, taking
photos of the dirt by the river

from the top. Held our jugs
like the Stanley Cup to declare

our air and crawled back down
through time and space to lumber

outward through the neighborhood
to eternity which is one warm drink

we have in our hands. To accomplish
nothing is something special. I have

felt the lukewarm heat of tongue last
longer than this. I waited years for

something extraordinary to occur.
In my memory we last eternal.

In my memory we are whole, sober,
on the cusp of happiness.

 

(originally published in The Los Angeles Review of Los Angeles, Summer 2019)

Kylie’s at the Ohio State Game

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

& she celebrates among the drunken dead at the Horseshoe

how ball-missiles fly through air and land cradled in young idols’ arms

I remember this,
                                            fear of missing out– no: just missing
                                                                                                               fumbling
                         no want to pull winter hat over my ears

                                            I drink spiked cider reminding me the summer river

                         no breathing fire into my palms into
                                                                                        the frigid heart of Columbus. No,
I am waiting for the pedestrians to pass my house. Mostly decked in red, some
in opposing green, almost like Christmas, but without–

family knows the apples I douse in vodka.

             family knows my unwell.
family knows my eye toward the wind I find too cold
                                                                                                 & blow against

been awhile since Kylie & I were breathing the same air
                                                             & I’ve got a kind of sixth sense for it

                                                                               (I see dead people)

                       but not in a ghost way more like everyone I pass has ghosted
                                                                              (the phantom passes in public)

& it’s true we both head home for the Christian holidays.
                                                                                                        Xmas, xgiving.

                                  Cars passing the same routes
                                                                 to different destinations.

                                                                      Desolate highway.

                                          Kylie’s down the street & I’m drowning here
                                                                         making a scene

                                                                         her silhouette at the surface joyous
                                                                                                                     but occupied

 

(originally published in Qwerty, Spring 2018)