mlb

The Kansas City Royals Cope With Loss

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

A river isn’t really blue. The Mississippi
has dried, and even love is transparent.

We adorn ourselves blue so loss
can be quantified in color. Such

is the brittle paintbrush, naked
and grieving, but we are not

the color of grieving,
nor tobacco spat in the dugout

in shame. We remember
the dirt, and who we loved,

long before we searched
clouds’ faces for ghosts,

her grays in the white
within eternal blue.

 

(originally published in ‘the vacant hinge of a song’, courtesy of Origami Poems Project)

Up and Down the Stairs

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Watched watched time
slip in every missed wooden swing
and pixelated glove’s plop

I ran up and down the stairs on
measured pink-speckled carpet,
to the basement, to the kitchen, to the basement,
to the kitchen – a treadmill’s dream, the incline
an inclination against elderly lethargy,
the seventh inning, an extra inning,
watery left eye saying, how do you move
so swiftly, turning to the tv to make a call for

the bullpen, the bullpen,
call in the bullpen,

call the hospital:
the only time I said I love you and
I croaked it

in my chest. The mumbled sine wave.
I clicked the phone off,
game ending, closer to the closer, the

closed door,
the casket we closed to forget.

 

(originally published in Corvus Review, Winter 2015 Issue)