literature

After I See Your Post About Visiting L.A.

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I reach out– longing for connection.
When surrounded by seagulls, I look

for the first semblance of friend. Not
that we have much to anchor anymore,

conversationally. Dolzani’s English class.
I didn’t read assigned books. Didn’t

become The Old Man and The Sea. So
many years to make safe passage. My voice

was a heavy, closed hardcover, whispering
through class as pages turned, and here

I am, strange and estranged, gazing out
over the Pacific, waiting for your response

on my seashell phone. Any sign of humanity
meant I would try. You never answer, anyway.

I unmoor my flaming boat to the coming
monsoon, scrape my hand against burning

plank to gather first ashes. I write my name in
soot. I hold my breath and swoosh into the next

life: the hold-on-to-me, the help-me, the drive-
aimlessly-through-your-twenties until arriving,

at last, at another confused island, a new
decade of drifting through cloudless nights.

(originally published in Cacti Fur, Summer 2021)

Poetry Break

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I attempt to translate the goo in my brain into something both palatable and relatable
whilst contemplating my grim employment prospects. Zigzag, zigzag go the roads
in a city I never expected to inhabit. Pittsburgh’s hills are steep. I expect at a certain
acceleration at an erroneous angle my Ford Fiesta will slow-motion backflip and
scrape the top side metal against the gravel and I’ll drop to where I started. You
ever read Catch-22? I keep picturing the pointlessness of the flying. The missions,
day-to-day. Figure eights inside the clouds and never further. I can’t with supervisors.
Hierarchy, don’t tell me what to do. I will, though. Mop, drive, fetch, catch, good
little doggy. I can barely keep my tongue in mouth. Can barely control my saliva.

(originally published in On Loan From the Cosmos, Spring 2020)

Canton Central Catholic

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

My high school was ninety-nine percent white
classmates without filter said you’re a bit off-kilter
what are you I mean what are you I mean
all I am is me my whole life everything I know
half-Filipino half-West Virginian so you mean
like half-Asian half-hick I mean like basically
I don’t have the ear for Appalachia and must
be good at math and I said neither they said
solve this solve this these equations flicked
into my ear shoved into my eyes but my
coping mech was laughter
is there another term for that?

 

(originally published in Cabildo Quarterly, Winter 2018)

Ghost Pepper

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

The taco meat I seasoned
gets drier by the day. I add ghost
pepper though I do not do well
with high spice. I have no self-
control– four, five, six tacos
at a time– dry beef, cheddar,
heat– the ghost eventually
haunts, tongue in flames.
Last week I drank Long Islands
with a former lover and ended
in a park of hills at 2 A.M.
I lost my glasses in the grass,
but she called me baby one last
time. Everything was blurry, dark,
when I kissed her goodbye
in her apartment, slept in my bed
to the whir of the ceiling fan.
The next morning I called
my girlfriend, told her I loved her
but the words burnt my tongue.

 

(originally published in taxicab magazine, 2018)

What We Talk About When We Talk About

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Pepper burned my mouth
and all I could think of
in that salivated flame
was you telling me your tongue
no longer felt the heat
of a moment: meaningless
sex– bite and garment
here between the green
walls of your zen room
your small goldfish
swimming in circles–
submerged flame and hunger
for love so intense
I flicker poems to you
thumbs on lighters
waiting for the matchbook
to catch– combed pomade
hair, designer jeans, and wit–
what I want is origami
and fire– instead
we talk about love
but unlike Raymond Carver
we have nothing
more to say.

 

(originally published in Words Dance, Summer 2017)

Raskolnikov

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

the weight of an axe sleeps
between us in bed.

we dream of horses
wanting to whip us

until the stable
lives up to its name.

the pawnbroker’s hunched shadow
further crumples into shadow.

there it is, a black apple–
and your pupils, telling truths into the dark.

 

(originally published in Pudding Magazine, Winter 2016)

Two Guys, Two Gallons of Yuengling, Two Plastic Jugs

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Tongues composed of lager and slathered words drip
turbulence from the roadmaps of mouths, the ocean’s
rock and regurgitation. We meandered along brick-paved
roads with half-amber jugs in our hands, how quickly
we drown but how slowly we swayed on swings
in the frigid, desolate playground at night by the highway,
eyes entranced by the spotlight from the city’s hidden heart
we desire but never find but in the beer’s flat hops like a pair
of clumsy trombonists, asynchronous staccatos and B-flat
scales bottling air from silver mouthpiece to S.O.S–

 

(originally published in Cacti Fur, Summer 2016)

I Tell Her I Love Her

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I tell my girlfriend I love her
before we go to bed every night.
I tell her I love her in Vegas, in front
of slot machines spinning statistics,

neon colors blinding eyes beyond
our blur of vodka. I tell her I love her
before we fight in a tent on the beach
drunken under blankets and after that, too.

I don’t tell my mom I love her
on the phone when she’s alone
in her bedroom, when she cries
many nights because her twenty-

nine year marriage lives only in memories,
photographs, marginalia, in the musk
of dried sweat on forest-green cargos.
He had dragged an oak limb

after soft rain; now, crusted mud–
crevices alive in the treading
of boots– traces new footsteps
on less-traversed floors.

 

(originally published in Boston Accent Lit, Summer 2016)