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A Sustained Sound of Longing

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

My heart– a poem, a bass line audible
in Cleveland. You’re in the Heights now,
further away than ever, but it’s fine. I left

you first & felt a sapphire tinge in every
step. How always we wrapped
our bodies in caution tape

tangled in each other anyway.
I couldn’t drive a straight line,
couldn’t speak without stumbling

into potholes leapfrogging the walk
to your apartment on North High.
Inside, your dog was on a leash,

wagging his tail at a ghost
he could not know.

(originally published in Poetry Salzburg Review, Summer 2023)

Operatic Pop

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I have lived enough to knife
through precious indifference:
time to say goodbye, sang
Andrea Bocelli through my
childhood’s echoing eardrums,
banging through the baseball
game of stressful situations.
How I overcame my fear
of public speaking was when
I was believed in, once,
to deliver Wayne’s wedding
from obliteration (green
in the cleaved landscapes
I scampered fully across)
and the contentment rings
high in vibrato today.

(originally published in Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Fall 2023)

Jesse and Andrew

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

were two good friends in Los Angeles,
and in last night’s dream, Andrew announces
he quit acting, though we knew him as a screenwriter,
because he found success in Ohio, and thinking back,
in reality, we were journeying toward the same adolescent
dream, green stars, and we pursued when we were heartbroken,
worn-out, reckless, and last I saw Andrew he stuffed quarters
into the jukebox at gold-lit Birds, repeating Sussudio, commenting
on every woman at the bar, and I didn’t speak up. And Jesse had
returned that day from Thailand. He was sad and I was in love.
I had a chance to see him again– last fall, New York– but he has
a kid now and I could not muster a bus, or to revisit reminiscing
the dreams we shared, what we had to wake up from
during our long, separate searches for meaning.

(originally published in Ink Pantry, Fall 2024)

Childhood Backyard

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Oblivious to the approaching hard-
ships of the road, the sleeping leaves
with years of nourishment wake
with you in your mom’s backyard,
under dark sky and pine boughs.
Those autumn days the wind blew,
singing, but remembering the song
has become too loud. Place your palm
against the bark to soften its voice, cease
the rustling. Come inside now. Walk
through your memories like in a dream.

(originally published in EAP: The Magazine, Summer 2023)

I Want You to Think of Me All the Time

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

My partner says I want you
to think of me all of the time,
leaving knick-knacks: glow-
in-the-dark stars on the ceiling,
Miami Collection Post-Its,
a mylar balloon unicorn

that is thriving. She props it
on my lamp so it’s in my face
when I need more light. A kawaii
bumper sticker on my iPhone.
Hand-drawn cards in the drawer.

But I see tumbleweeds of dog hairs
and dust in the corners on the floor.
I find strands of your black
hair in my beard. I leave

last week’s dishes for not-my-present
self to find and when I see the balloon
on the lamp, I get it: you know
what keeps me going.

(originally published in Tower Poetry Society, Spring 2023)

Falling Rock

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

As soon as a stone (from where,
who knows?) cracked my wind-
shield during a delivery I quit

my job as a driver. I zagged
right from the highway’s
middle lane to the median

and set the car in park,
but could not control my thoughts–
chest throbbing, engine thrumming.

I had to step out and breathe
before I could convict the
quartz intending to harm me.

All smooth and small, I was not
sure which was the right rock,
scanning gravel to see several

similar enough. But the wolf
among them, I know, wanted to
break the glass, blind me

and puncture my jugular, only
for me to be saved by a surgeon
who would never fully believe

the story. I avoided death this time,
alive on the side of the road, looking
back in search of a falling rock sign.

(originally published in Bond Street Review, Winter 2021)

I Never Considered My Grandparents

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Whom I never met, would be buried in Akron,
the backdrop of sleepless drunk nights, wandering
park properties as if I owned them in my boisterous
consumption, alive but for the thrill of spending
time with those I wish eternity upon, gathered
before me the gargoyles, the hellraisers, the love
I could burrow underneath rain-pocked heartache,
one golden anniversary away from immortality
on a slab of stone drunk kids can stumble over
and plant their knees in the recycled mud.

(originally published in Impspired, Summer 2023)

Bro

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Get out of my life with
your election signs. Don’t
tell me what stakes
you stuck in your front lawn.
Come on. I know you’re not
a boomer. You say we’re at
a crossroads and I gaze
into the neighbor’s yard–
used to be bushes concealing
every outside path. Now there’s
someone on a lawnmower severing
the bonds of grass, in intervals,
each direction I look, each time
I visit home. And we comment
each new motor makes it harder
to reach each other. Mom’s
neighbors want to beat the rain.
We just built this fire in the back
of my childhood home. These
bundles of sticks my mom gathers,
waiting for us to come home
some early October Saturday.
At my brother’s first mention
of herd immunity, my sister
suggests we seek more kindling
in the tall grass. The air is
parched but we must keep
burning. Firewood left from Dad’s
death we’ve already forgotten.
My brother says we’re gonna
lose all this country fought for–
Dad survived World War II
only to shatter his ribs on a fire
hydrant sixty years later. Mom
would not let the coroner dig
into his carcass for an autopsy.
In his later years, Dad would keep
a hose beside our bonfires. Still,
we hunch over heat together,
burning hot dogs on forgotten
skewers. We dredge the past
again: a year after my father’s death,
cooking hot dogs over walnut husks,
one of you said there could be
an industry for the timbered taste
coating the tenuous meat we’ve
shared over the years.

(originally published in Alternate Route, Spring 2023)