exploration

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)

Near-Collision

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Not that I don’t want to walk the streets with you.
But when I sit on a suspended turtle shell
hanged from risen arms and don’t think it’s magic
is the issue. It should be magic.

We walked through spider webs.
Middle-school basketballers howled
like playing wolves behind us.

A rock split and whizzed past us like a meteor:
hurled through space and time
to find us here

and still barely missed.

Thousands of light years
on the pin of a needle.
Striking sandy bits of gravel.
Clanging like dropped silverware.

The fridge is packed with eggs inside.
Vodka lives frozen but still fills glasses
topped with orange juice. They swirl
and marry happily and end
in a bathroom, anyway.

As if chocolate swirls in ice cream
didn’t represent the arms of the galaxy.
Comets made of custard and fairy
dust move in high speeds and
travel in circles smaller than us.

I know at great range
there is someone else I will barely miss.

 

(originally published in Lines + Stars, Spring 2015)