human

Anachronism / Angiosperm

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I’m trying to tell you
          I’m trying

                                 my petals’ attempt
at opening

                  an articulate tongue

    the phylum anthophyta

                                  glass breaking in the sun

I am Late Jurassic
   early Cretaceous

                                   it’s true I don’t belong
here among your desiccated peonies

I plead bee telepathy

          antennae

                          someone read
                                              my mind

before the era ends
                                  before I swallow

pyrethroids

     over ensuing millennia I can’t promise
                                                       I will adapt

(originally published in Ginosko Literary Journal, Fall 2021)

60%

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

to stay alive I must believe I am water
inside my own body inside the river

my living an arrow shot into the forest
ghost slashed open by every stranger

who claims to walk on water when
nothing but air parting is the motion

of feet scrambling to become some
sacred proclamation it is not

 

(originally published in S/WORD, Fall 2018)

Getting Sober

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

If I don’t watch it, this lake
is vodka and I won’t care I don’t
know how to swim. Getting sober
is like that. I go out into the world
and look you in the eyes and say
I’m fine. I’m having a good time
and you go on never knowing
I was half-underwater, that
there was a monster trying
to make its way to the surface
and I had to push him down.

 

(originally published in Rattle, Winter 2018 – nominated for Best of the Net)