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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)

Marina & the Diamonds

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

After our date at Melt Bar and Grilled
cheese grease macaroni and butter saliva
dripped from our lips onto crumb plates
back when Marina & the Diamonds were hip
(if they were ever) in style I wired it from aux

cord to speakers to let you know I am not
a robot in an operatic tone indicating
romantic desperation my circuits buzzing
& I thought during the open-heart chorus
you’d say much more than cool

(originally published in Ygdrasil, Winter 2021)

Obsolescence

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

The only photograph of us we ever took was
at Thursday’s Lounge, on an ancient phone from
ten years ago. Your boyfriend at the time snapped
us, smiling, in front of the liquor selection. Neither

of us realized it would be years until the next time
we would meet again. Since then, I have acquired
a mountain of phones, piled somewhere in storage.
And while I want to find this picture for some kind

of momentary joy, I cannot hope to find one such
antiquity in a landfill of antiquities. I know the
memory has become warped, muted, fuzzy.
Since I’ve seen you, we have both compiled a

mountain of loves, relics embedded within
ourselves. The brain’s complicated wirings–
circuitry functioning enough to remind me
we were, briefly, more than a photograph.

(originally published in AvantAppal(achia), Spring 2023)

Now That You Are Engaged

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

       I refuse to believe
a word you told me. We talked home
movies by your bedside lamp
       and shared a feather pillow.
Don’t talk to me about the fate
of birds when morning comes and all
       I hear is silence. Then I listen a
little longer and hear your soft breathing
I know you’re faking. You don’t sleep,
       I didn’t either. The absinthe on your
breath meant we lived long enough
to forget another night. How could
       we forget a lesson like that?

(originally published in Sweet Tree Review, Winter 2023)

Mockery

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

we paid a judgment debt
now we drive red-on-blue
thunder on Akron soft-rock

in the void into the name-of-mine
where Katie and I
must make a mockery of ourselves

I must state I am not the opportunity
I need to define
you are the opportunity

and we pretend to avenge
our fallen love’s arches we are the same
down between dots that rusted golden medal

in an ocean of toothpaste of scraps of dirt shoes
of wings on our backs under legs covered in scars
of dark scuffed white on the wrong pavement

knowing no matter what I say
you are to tell me I love you
until we’ve laughed it out

(originally published in Mason Street, Winter 2022)