los angeles

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)

7.13.13

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

We covered ourselves in soot in my mom’s basement–
you told me you loved me but I had to move home

to have your heart. We dug holes in the backyard
but already too many buried bodies so I boarded

the plane, returned to L.A. to live at the foot of hills.
I said I’d visit sometime, up top, to overlook the ocean

I knew teeming with unspeakable life–
I could not say a word of it to anyone.

 

(originally published in Hamline Lit Link, Spring 2020)

Denuded

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Naked at the lake between salamander bodies, I kiss
your face, handfuls of sunflower on my nipples.

With mountains behind me (to my surprise)
I have become a bouquet. Verdant hills

a family– a cheetah must hide in this wilderness.
I feel emerald eyes ogling me from somewhere

in space time– even in this reunion,
I want to be as naked as a cloudless sky,

as the eroded stone I stand on.

(originally published in The Sock Drawer, Fall 2020)

Breathless Electric Silence

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

the dead friend you are thinking of
says the sky’s no longer the limit

inside there are good spaces
between us you wanna press

the green button on your existence.
that is what he would have wanted:

to arrive. one day you will awaken
barefoot under a leafy blanket

in your dress shirt & blue tie
and he will live inside your eyes

the way ants share summer
crumbs

(originally published in indicia lit, Summer 2022)

Seesaw (California / Ohio)

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I wanted to be a wayward lasso,
to toss and be tossed.

Racetrack for the rainy season.
Horsetail-whipped.

Grieve not the slobbering mouth
of distance. I wanted a different

chance. Someone else,
or no one– there, entwined,

I’m sorry. You said there
was a way to make long

distance work and I was
no one in return but another.

Already, then, I was
galloping to the dark place

of convincing the pavement’s
otherwise steadiness. Did not

wish an earthquake to settle
my legs with falling,

so eager was I
to forget the other path.

 

(originally published in The Wax Paper, Spring 2020)

Blue

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

The wave at the shore
was followed by blood
and flame. California singes
itself, Thousand Oaks
surrounded by smoke
clouds rising
into a blanket, smothering,
like the chorus
assembling on our streets–
the world is dying,
but first our friends
and neighbors,
how this bloodshed
has been on the fringe
of our existence until
it’s not, it’s everywhere–
down the road, polluting
our hope, it seemed
everyone
we knew cast a vote
to turn the world
blue
so how do we
drown the flames?

 

(originally published in Capsule Stories, Fall 2020)

Float Through

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Today, I slide on slush on my drive. Unplowed roads, slippery odometer–
morning snow surprise. Pittsburgh’s a city of hills unavoidable, and later,

waiting on a grocery pickup, I stare into the rearview mirror at the frost-
tipped pines when a knock on my window removes me from my existential

stupor. I don’t know how to interact anymore. Crank the window the wrong
way. Peppermint mocha, the years past. I bought a latte this morning but did

not know how to order it. The Dunkin teens stared, dumfounded, and it was
a foggy day like this– in which I float through the happenings– that I last

crashed my car. In Los Angeles, I flew down the dry 405, beat after
a long day in a Hollywood studio, and was amazed at the hospital light

brightness as I passed Westwood, like I could snap my fingers and time
would once again resume, while five other lanes of traffic zigged around

me with no regard to my existence. I was like a visitor to myself dragged
back into being with silent smoke pouring out the mouth of my Ford’s

hood. The front was crumpled but the SUV I slammed into appeared
untouched. The sixteen-year-old girl called her dad to ask what to do.

She took my insurance, my number, then drove off with the rest of the
world, as I stood at the side of the highway waiting for someone to

help me go home, still, to this day.

(originally published in the chapbook Count Seeds With Me (Ethel Zine & Micro-Press), Spring 2022)

I’ve Been on a Bender Since Becoming an Adult

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

in the dark of grimy
bars floral couches live

feathers (what a thrill beneath
neon green) in view of Saint

Maria’s grand brick parish
I unclasp Catholicism’s hands

from my neck (backdrop always holy
human touch) how can one believe

in anything other than getting fucked
up loving people at parties

unconditionally my friends I have
forgotten too many nights not

to complete the circle offered
under guidance of compass

and an unsteady hand
flicking the lighter

(originally published in Incessant Pipe, Winter 2021)