friendship

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)

Red String

/ James Croal Jackson / 1 Comment

the road to dream is knotted
tangled          never broken
early mornings Santa Clarita

studio beneath setting moon
we talked     bright futures
in film reel and photograph

just two in a crowd afraid
of its own shadows        of
stepping out into the light

and not being recognized
       yes we have gone our
separate ways              love

and heartbreak heartbreak
and love     cardinal singing
an evening song to lull us

back to valley open full
with ink quill and camera
and old dreams to dream of

(originally published in Agony Opera, Summer 2021)

Protest Beginning in Friendship Park (Pittsburgh, June 5, 2020)

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

It is not enough
to not be
racist. Heresy
to remove
your mask
and cough.
White men
move
their mask
and cough
into a crowd.
We are still
supposed to be
distant. Now
I can’t clean myself
enough off. Blood
on my hands
after hundreds
of years. Yet
we chant the system
has gone on
too long. We look
into a chaos
of fog & tear
gas smoke.
I am lucky
to live
this long.
We must peel
all the saturated
paint off America’s
crumbling walls
and build a new
house.

(originally published in Breathe, May 2021)

April 14, 2008

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

after inflatables
        and Friday night I went to the House
        after making fun of King
        Kong with the brothers
                Dance Marathon we first talked
                then went to Pizza King with Dabs
        accepted oxygen in my water as trees
        dead napkins we returned to Constitution
                played sober via HORSE
                with bottle and recycle bin

earlier I helped Gary with the Poker Mixer
           it was either the cheesy bread
           or Gatorade that got me
     we went to Walgreen’s for beef jerky
           along the way we stopped at Sara’s for Orloff
           at Fisher’s for refried beans

(originally published in Literary Forest, Fall 2022)

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)

Trying to Make Friends After Improv Class

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

up treacherous stairs at the end
of January to sit in the hidden
room at the back of the Tap
where we question west elm
shelves the green-lit décor
a chicken bone and Catholic
school what I have learned
is instead of being funny
just talk about triangles
hanging on white walls
the weird will happen
math emotions a geometry
like which-year-Texas-
Instrument calculator
you wrote 80085 on
was it 84 was it 83
what I learned everything
is improvisational
the drink selection
the sidewalk ice the
weather our atoms
bouncing off each
other’s atoms in
quantum uncertainty
where will this go
if we sew shut our
fervent minds and
listen to what we
don’t know next
will ever happen,
ever

(originally published in Stickman Review, Winter 2022)

Celestial Egg

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

                      “They’re not deviled eggs
                      because Lucifer was once an angel.”
                                              -Anth

At the bar you order
a small white plate
of celestial eggs.

Holy mayonnaise
yellow topped
with chives.

They are gulped
except for the last,
which you offer me

through telepathy.
I am the egg.
When I stop throbbing

is when I live
so I hold it high
in our five spotlights.

The arena cheers.
I see many doors.
Five floors:

on the bottom, death,
but each row above
a plethora of possibilities.

In your car, you say
I am feeling unmoored,
my shoe half-out your door.

The renaissance is what we
make. It is brown paint
over everything, the oil

light– you ask, what is on
your mind? I don’t know
how much you know

but I felt the warmth
of the machine beside me
thrumming on the street.

You were on the phone,
I think. I glared– I think
the end is coming

faster than fresh ideas
or the universe’s
rate of expansion.

The fact you drove
saved me from running
through the dark city

in the center of my existence.
In the shadow room
inside my house,

I did not process
emotion. The throbbing
sprain in my foot.

It was that death
issued a rain check
when I smacked my head

in the basement bar
of the indie theater.
I was the movie

everyone watched.
I left everyone waiting
for me to emerge

from the sewer. I swear
I will not group up next time.
I want each synapse

comprehended. To succeed
would be the stretchy fabric
of my living. Nylon

for the brain. Procrastination
for the ascent. I say you need
not worry because I am not

worried. Depression is a shovel
deep in soil and I am buried
in my mind, thankful

to be given a second
heaping of kindness
when I never deserved the first.

Hard to learn you
when my body is uniformly
jagged and growing

hairs sharp like knives
eternally out of every inch.
I want to be soft

with you, but once
we eat, all mysticism
is lost to process.

(originally published in Academy of the Heart and Mind, Spring 2023)

Dean’s Birthday

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Sometimes a Saturday is candle wax
the length from Cleveland to Columbus, a highway
of years burning blue in early spring, a handful

of flowers you hand an old friend who seems
a little aged now: a new house, a long mortgage,
a luxury car and me, unemployed,

eating pizza and fries.
He drinks red wine (party
hard weekend) –

these blood-drinks of youth.
I buy him nothing
he gives me space in return.

 

(originally published in The Heartland Review, Fall 2018)

To Paige (From Jack), 2017

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

i bark at da ups guy not cuz i guess hes here to mess things up
but cuz hes here every day when ur not    im wonderin y u go

away & y i cant come      i would go anywhere wid u
so y does anyone go anywhere when im content ta sit where da staircase

bends & watch for u     im afraid of knocks sometime somethin
bangin da door of what i name safe    i sense da whole worlds fearin

& i can smell bad from a mile away      deres so much of it i wag my stub
for makin it dis long .    still i hope ull always come back from snow , rain

& surgery so i bark ur name da best i know when u return    tho loud
& disruptive deres no different sound for love jus rattlin da home’s bones astray

wid my voice & wonder if some day itll all collapse sometime inta heaps of
forgotten timber & brick . id follow if u leave dat great clear barrier & return .

i spend my day lyin here thinkin of ways to tell u dat       to shout
like from a mountain through da valleys as loud i can da whole clatter

best i know how        like u do when u walk thru dat door
its da loudest thing :   u fill my ears wid bells    i can hear nothin beautiful else

(originally published in Delphinium, Summer 2018)