los angeles

Advertising

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I have been inside
a marketing firm
with its own basketball court.
Uninspired employees huffed
then daggered meaningless
the hoop, hoping for renewal,
but no one kept score.
I could relate:
attending Catholic school,
I found it necessary
to ask for forgiveness
in the shower.
I had come to fear
a red-fanged Satan
sporting a porn ‘stache
waiting by the mirror,
covering himself with
a towel, fork in hand–
and me, behind childhood
curtains covered in soot,
water rushing, my body
seal-like from ablution.

(originally published in Sooth Swarm Journal, Summer 2018)

Morning Reflection

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I walk waiting for the clarity of nature to upend my core
having forgotten again another grand idea I had the night before

the rain-soaked sidewalk
& deep dent on a passenger door

a two-story house I think is too tall
too wet       bricks and white columns

each window a translucent universe of past
raindrops & the universe everything ahead of you
                                                                     out of reach past the physical

the American flag waves in the wind
black sedans drive to a hair studio

talk show hosts spit they just
spit

& my dream once was to be on television
& in Los Angeles it happened
                                                                    my face on mom’s television

but otherwise forgotten
still signals invisible waves

here I am a field the scribbled wandering
eyes & a blue jay makes a home in a tree

& me in the days I become
when I look in any mirror

 

(originally published in Botticelli Magazine, Spring 2018)

Blendoku

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

We can work on puzzles all day,
watch the patterns move
from one color to the other.

Block colors twist in gradients
until blending into something else.

The sun removes itself
from the scene, shifts
behind a cloud,

creates a change in light,
a block of bricks on a building
slightly darker than the rest.

 

(originally published in SOFT CARTEL, 2018)

North Carolina Wedding

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I don’t know anyone
but the gnats swarming
around me &

the stranger
next to me calls them
wedding bugs

marriage begins with wings
then seeks blood
sucking glimpse of sweat

on skin sugar all the single
guests swat at the air
around them familiar

the way we complain
of heat so beg
for rain to form in

these shrouds of clouds
to cool us down
it’s nice to have something

tangible to wish for

 

(originally published in Razor Literary Magazine, Spring 2018)

 

Let’s Make a Deal

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

At a McDonald’s in Ohio the TV
plays Let’s Make a Deal & two
old white men are enraptured mouths
open in awe of the studio energy
around Wayne Brady & I
know he’s happy but the audience
is fake I was paid to be
fake in L.A. forty dollars cash is all
it takes for one to clap clap
mid-clap three hours palms
burn & lucky luck even those
who somehow chosen sneak
onto stage know they did
not bring the green glittering
top hat they’re told to wear & now
their hair holds dead rabbits
the producers keep killing
& we’re laughing it’s funny
they tell us & when I was on
the show they asked me to whoop
my gutted-fish stomach out
& of course I yelled the wrong
numbers in the game & brand-
new sedans were revealed
as what I could have had
had I said six instead of
seven & then collected my
forty in line alongside everyone
returning loopy props to
props I know my mom is proud she
shows me & my colorful howling
crowd to happy rooms years
after the date I’m biting into
McNuggets with gold teeth
& cavities

 

(originally published in New Pop Lit, Spring 2018)

I’m Coming Home

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I was at Pink’s Hot Dogs
on the set of a reality show
working as an extra
when LeBron announced
his return to the Cavaliers.
I read the article repeatedly
on my sun-tinted phone screen,
each word
its own small gospel.

In my Ford in the evening,
I sat in the Ralphs parking lot
wondering if LeBron
can come home, why can’t I?

Then I reasoned
Akron’s prodigal son’s return
means more to a city
who does not know who I am
than I mean to a city
who does not know who I am

and until my name
is plastered on blue
signs welcoming weary travelers
The Birthplace of the Poet
then why can’t I
is the relationship
of an alignment
of some celestial sneeze
into a birthplace of stars

or the bloodline
between who you were
where you grew up
and who you still can become

 

(originally published in RAW Journal of Arts, Spring 2018)

Amy, 2014

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I remember pink tongues of vodka became the Pacific
and we’d drown the breeze, water at our feet,
and keep lapping the glass bottle, lips on plastic cup,
swig after hazel-eyed swig, watching hang-gliders
soar inevitably to land, like us, at some black-and-
sand conclusion meaning one of us was wrong, one
of us always mouthing the wrong words into wind,
wisps of brown hair meandering to the air, ocean
blues fading peripherally into drink to swallow
the burning, your dimples creased up, unable
to look in your eyes to lie about love anymore.
This is what I remember of your face.

 

(originally published in Furtive Dalliance, Winter 2018)