father

Bro

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Get out of my life with
your election signs. Don’t
tell me what stakes
you stuck in your front lawn.
Come on. I know you’re not
a boomer. You say we’re at
a crossroads and I gaze
into the neighbor’s yard–
used to be bushes concealing
every outside path. Now there’s
someone on a lawnmower severing
the bonds of grass, in intervals,
each direction I look, each time
I visit home. And we comment
each new motor makes it harder
to reach each other. Mom’s
neighbors want to beat the rain.
We just built this fire in the back
of my childhood home. These
bundles of sticks my mom gathers,
waiting for us to come home
some early October Saturday.
At my brother’s first mention
of herd immunity, my sister
suggests we seek more kindling
in the tall grass. The air is
parched but we must keep
burning. Firewood left from Dad’s
death we’ve already forgotten.
My brother says we’re gonna
lose all this country fought for–
Dad survived World War II
only to shatter his ribs on a fire
hydrant sixty years later. Mom
would not let the coroner dig
into his carcass for an autopsy.
In his later years, Dad would keep
a hose beside our bonfires. Still,
we hunch over heat together,
burning hot dogs on forgotten
skewers. We dredge the past
again: a year after my father’s death,
cooking hot dogs over walnut husks,
one of you said there could be
an industry for the timbered taste
coating the tenuous meat we’ve
shared over the years.

(originally published in Alternate Route, Spring 2023)

Cracked Windshield

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Sudden the stone that cracked
the windshield, the storm that
struck the heirloom oak– you
ask for rain, beg for answers.
Soaked hands steer through
the blindness of the blur–
ten years now since Dad
merged into the final lane,
his pass misjudging distance
from collision, and that night
Mom heard a screeching
in her bedroom like a crow
passing from another world,
a bleak siren thrusting her
to darkness her headlights
could not cut through.

(originally published in Kingdoms in the Wild, Winter 2021)

The Basement

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

As a kid, when my friends came
over, we would become stalagmites
on brown basement carpet, Nintendo
controllers in hand. Screen’s cold
glow our lamp in the cave. My dad,
one morning, stomped down
the stairs and yelled to play

outside. We sprinted into daylight
and blackened our palms
with a depressurized basketball.

We made the net’s swoosh sounds
with our mouths, shooting the ball
into a nearby branch, since the hoop
was erected not on pavement but
in the backyard. A dirty game of
grass and dirt. Later I learned
my Uncle Zane passed away that
morning, My father must have
felt so temporary and small,
and I wonder how long he was
in the kitchen, seething about
our wasted time.

When he ordered us to go upstairs
and outside, he was doing
the best he could to keep
us from being underground.

(originally published in Hello America Stereo Cassette, Winter 2022)

Eyes (Mine)

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

If I tried to count how many nights I’ve wandered
alone to find myself, it would be on more fingers
than all my family has. If I were worried
only about eyes on walks stalking me–
if I hadn’t watched The Lion
King at seven, and my father hadn’t died,
and my brother– I wouldn’t be present
in this field of wild cleavers with my Mufasas
whispering weeds in the moonlight. Always
that breeze tickling the hairs across
my skin. That’s why I don’t walk
barefoot in the grass– I don’t trust strangers’
hands, so I count tendrils on everything green
in the dark that’s growing, wondering
if you remember how long it took
for me to learn to tie my shoes. The laces
multiplied in my field of math
I fumbled over. My hands, I could
never be precise enough to be
a mechanic, or a surgeon.
We were in the basement and
oh, you were so patient,
television glowing and muted. Dark
news and wave band static. These
negative film reels roll to nights
embedded in memory when I try
to sleep, when my lids are full
of images. I can’t believe I’ve stared
at the surface of the moon so many nights
over the years and just now saw
there is your face. My face.

(originally published in Hello America Stereo Cassette, Spring 2021)

Deviled Eggs

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

My father despised even the word
Satan. Believed our house cursed
if ever I were to bring a Ouija board
home. And he preached the dangers
of using the word fool– an insult,
he said, from the mouth of Lucifer.
As a family, we went to the theater
to watch Titanic, but didn’t stay to
see the ship sink. We left soon after
previews due to the devil’s language.
What set him off was a god damn.
We weren’t even allowed deviled
eggs. I never ate one until I made
a batch in my twenties with an ex, but
the mess was too mustardy. Dirty
dishes on the counters of a cramped
kitchen. Today– this slushy Christmas
Eve– a friend drops a fresh batch
of demons on our porch, and I hold
the first egg in my hand, a chalice
almost holy, the swirl a flourish,
a handheld soft-serve mountain
top. I devour the lot– all six gifts–
without fearing the sin of gluttony.

(originally published in SPANK the CARP, Winter 2023)

Hog

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

there is no wrong way to eat
a hot dog there is no right
to eat a dog there is no hot
dog hot popsicle of pig
meat slathered in existential
ketchup bread-claustrophobic

                                                                    *

         once on a drive home from Central Catholic
         I stopped at the Dairy Queen Drive-Thru
                 and asked for hot dog wrapped in lettuce
                 I was more hypochondriac at sixteen
                 than at thirty-two anyway the kid
                 at the window said they couldn’t
                 but I insisted and the manager
                 smuggled the long sizzling dog in wet
                 lettuce I carry that shame in the trash
                 bag of my trunk to this day

                                                                    *

        pig meat
                       pig meat
                                       in a sleeping bag of green

                                                                    *

        there is no way to eat a dog
        there are ways to eat a hot dog
             I am a bog I am the bog I am
breakfast lunch dinner brunch midnight snack
  everlasting bun communion holy
water life I down through days and lick my fingers
after rough vigorous handwashing
               I’ve opened plastic package
               set skillet to flame
               lain logs on drizzled oil

                                                                    *

                       the celebrity chef in my mind
is me I documented cooking when I lived
in my car. That was my true potential. Oh, swine,
               you’re years beyond capable
yet I drove halfway across the country
to do what competitors do, which is down
hundreds of you. Joey Chestnut the undisputed
master after decades of dogs.

                                                                    *
                    Went to a dollar dog minor
                    league game twenty cents per dog flies
                    buzzing in orbit of condiments
                    five the limit at the window so all
                could see I had the buns. One each for
                     STRENGTH. ACCEPTANCE.
                        CONFIDENCE. GRACE.
                                   AMBITION.

                                                                    *

One inning was all
it took and I was alone in my new
                        city full of my father’s love
                        of baseball and barbecues. Now
                        there was an undisputed grill master.
                        Everyone knows one. I am not one.
                        There is no way to cook.
                        There is a way.
               Wayne was over and we flicked
               lit matches with our middle fingers
               from thumbs into ready
               charcoal to get the grill going.
We walked away and waited for
an action-movie explosion
but there was no ignition.

                                                                    *


                                                                                     My whole life I have been walking
                                                                                     away, not turning back to look.

(originally published in HAD, Summer 2022)

Attending a Polo Match on the Ten-Year Anniversary of My Father’s Death

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Death is in the shriveled blue and purple
hydrangea bouquet I gifted you. Kathy
bought the same, smaller, but they did not last
so much as linger. Mom calls me from Macy’s–
where she has sold colognes for thirty years–
and says she still struggles. But, on the phone,
I am drunk on a beach towel in a horse cemetery
where Juan Carlos and his team of red ride in
circles over forgotten bones, chasing a ghost-
white ball with a mallet through the empty space
between goalposts. In the first chukker, my sister–
who broke the news I somehow already knew
with a call in the dark of a dorm room– texts
me that she’s thinking of me today. At halftime,
when spectators are invited to flatten divots
on the field with their shoes, Kathy leaves
to help her family move, and the moment
she reverses her car from our tailgating spot,
I answer a call I am unaware of from my other
sister before seeing her text ask if I am okay,
that it sounded like I was in an accident
and drove into grass. No, I tell her, I am day-
drunk among ponies in the withering days
of summer. But what I don’t tell her is
on the way here, Kathy didn’t see the turquoise
minivan she nearly plunged into, and all we could
do as passengers was clutch the leather beneath
us as she sped full-throttle on thin and curvy roads
through the woods. We prayed to whatever tree
was nearest– birches in a blur– prayed the whole forest
to provide a signal to remind us we are, briefly, breathing.

 

(originally published in Sampsonia Way Magazine, Summer 2020)

World Series, 2019

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

First baseball game I’ve seen this season– game seven
of the World Series, Houston versus Washington. A sea
of orange in Texas. Scherzer versus Springer. Joe Buck
talks about muscle injections, pinched nerves, breaking
ball– full count. He says this series is full of big swings,
big emotions– isn’t that a normal week? Dad watched
every Cleveland game. Ever. For a summer I did,
too, but October is chillier than usual. Last week, we
buried my oldest brother. We used to play sports
games– Triple Play 2000, Gran Turismo– on the
basement’s cold, brown carpet, where all physics
hurtled toward inevitable destinations: a ball singing
through the air into a blurry glove, or tires spinning
through some grainy tunnel. We’d trade wins, half-
luck, but there was always a conclusion. Last year,
I held his hand in the hospital. He squeezed my
fingers and said what he couldn’t with his eyes.
Last week, he didn’t get the kidney he needed.
When Washington wins, I see men cry on each
other’s shoulders. When my brother dies, my brother
cries on my shoulder. I cry on his shoulder.
And when we look at each other,
we find someone we both miss.

(originally published in Knot Literary Magazine, Fall 2021)

Trimming Trees

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

When my father retired, he could not end
the work– sunrise blurred to sunset
sculpting trees within the canvas of our yard.
Soon, he said, you will wear my work
on your hands. But after he passed, my hands
would tremble leaning ladder onto tree,
snipping branches off the living
limbs.

(originally published in U-Rights Magazine, Fall 2020)

In Another Life I Am Content Enough

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

What simulation’s numb you ask
if I want children this time

definitive we boil Kraft mac
and cheese. I toss our meager sweet

potatoes in oil and ramble about financial
self-worth the oven nearly at four hundred

degrees. I can’t stop petting your shoulder
the ashy cat roams in the loam of our love

our newly swept hardwood the house
our home for now so limited already

steam from the inside a pressure
cooker of different timelines. What river

these converging lives to seek meaning
in the biological job postings some of us

are born to call. My dad was sixty-one
when I was born my grandfather clock

ticks nonexistent. We have gorged in all
our broken cabinets to rustle the blue

plastic grocery bag pile. I can’t stand
to live another day preoccupied.

(originally published in Flights, Summer 2021)