Original

Al Jarreau

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

In Spain I did love and adore you. I did.
But in Spain, it is easy to love and adore anything–

the paella, her rabbit flesh and beans;
even the sidewalk– acera.

With her language an aphrodisiac,
you do not wonder why you fall, or sustain, in love.

We spoke our ugly language around beautiful tongues
which filled the air with matrimonial vows.

In the beginning, we were the sound of stars, the language
of kisses. I can fall in love with anything skybound

and I do.

Those moon-colored nights were our yesterdays,
and tomorrow we return to our familiar,

where love is not wordless
nor as easily presumed.

(originally published in Memoryhouse, Spring 2016)

City at Night

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

When the city stops buzzing, streetlights
invite reflections onto storefront windows.

Finally, the distortions make us young,
removing cigarette burns and ash.

What love is reserved for the old? The bridge
seems sturdy in winter but more slippery

with its blue-streaked ice– and mouths of
gravel seem ageless. Time rescinds her reach

toward the cradle of sleep–
maligned shoes end on a cold porch,

slathered in a salty grit. Snow on
the doormat waits for extinction.

 

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

Long Beach

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

from a high rooftop after rain,
headlights lead their drivers
to safety in a grid of electricity;
slick, mighty towers surround
and glisten from orange streetlights;
the harbor, an unending cascade
of dreams painted
in reflected, rippling stars–

you can hear, from outside the metro,
a shrieking man in an aureolin raincoat,
several hurried severities of shoes
clopping on sidewalks

still I will tell you the city is beautiful
when far enough away to never see
imperfection

and I’ll hold you close,
hands clasping your ears,
our own static to block
distractions which, for the beauty
of this moment, do not matter–

 

(originally published in Random Poem Tree, February 2016)

Runner

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

You always have to run.

Short North to downtown,
city to city, Indiana

to Tennessee–
one shoe on gravel,

the other careening
through time and space

into a green
where you are unknown

and your running shoes are empty
at our red swing’s feet.

I know you never run to leave,
driving your horizon eyes

miles to sun– and you, after its setting,
glide beside each highway’s unlit rivers

on the bridge of the median, drunk
from driving so long under moon,

far from where our empty bottles
collect in a skyward infinity,

a mountain of clinking memories–
a marathon, a gap traversed quickly.

(originally published in VerseWrights)

My Father Was a Beekeeper

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I always knew my father was allergic to bees
but it wasn’t until his obituary
I learned he was once a beekeeper.

In those days, I hear, he prayed
to his veil– only to re-emerge, hours later,
having danced with God
under every umber swarm.

He was a gifted storyteller
but it wasn’t until his stroke
at seventy-four made me listen,
when his mouth betrayed his brain.

In his final years he would repeat,
the end of bees is the end of man.
So, heaven in the soft petals
scattered in the grass.

Young violets lined his coffin.
All I wanted was to listen

to stories he told before,
details I had forgotten.

Around the cemetery,
bees still glissando

through gardens not unlike the ones
he dug into his blackened fingernails–

honey and sweat, story-
pollinated requiems, harmonies

heard in bountiful
fields of bloodroot.

 

(originally published in Kaaterskill Basin Literary Journal – Spring 2016)

*Nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology

Young Skeletons

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

the baristas grind bones into coffee
in these cafes I call skeleton closets

this golden-brown-haired babe stands by my table
her laced leggings draw desire with a fine ballpoint pen

her head whips to me from some psychic seventh sense
she is my ex-girlfriend’s brother’s future ex

her eyes descend as B-movie UFOs
attraction vacuums neatly into a plastic bag

she sits with me like a pocketed thunderstorm
galvanized on The Great Wall of Chain-Link

you must believe me she says
there are no hard feelings

a poacher must say the same
beside a rhino’s castrated face

she asks if I come here often
I say I come hard everyday

just the flickering moon will summon the wolf
and we emulate its growls in fluorescent light

time is our species’ one enduring invention
a new carcass will not survive the night

so hold on to your corpse for as long as you can
until we mourn with our friends the forgetting

(originally published in The Broken Plate, Spring 2016)

Dog on the Patio

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Whenever I let the dog out
onto our small back patio
on sunny afternoons
and he lays on familiar brick

scratching his ears,
nose curious and wandering,
I remember my father

who, in the endless days of retirement,
learned the lawn better
than his calloused palms:

every humpbacked tree and drooping limb,
every snake and gopher hole,
every new and fallen anthill,
every cobweb on the lamppost,

where to find toads after rain,
how to catch them–

when he did not strive to create utopia
by chiseling trees into magazine models,

I often found him on a patch
of freshly-mown grass,
scratching his smoky, sun-basked beard,

waiting for the wind to speak,
to say more to him than I ever did.

 

(originally published in Black Elephant Lit, Spring 2016)