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Driving in Loops to Enterprise

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

We cruised Penn Avenue as compliant
vagabonds to the parking garage train

station to deposit/withdraw rental cars
in other people’s names. For a long time

I believed if you drove the actor’s maroon
luxury vehicle, you’d become the moon

yourself, at long last a god you believed in.
Being one who has to drive it to where it

must go, I know by now you will guide
its hand back to beneath the famous blue

bridge in the strip. You will sit at your desk
in the grainy film of your dreams and sketch

the rumblings of this world until golden hour.
The sun, then, will gift upon you ultraviolets.

 

(originally published in Confluence, Spring 2020)

“I’m Not Dead, I’m Dormant!”

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

                                -sign posted by the African Tree Grape
                                 at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical
                                Gardens in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

meaning
I love you I love you
or I did it’s not dead
I swear in my heart
there’s our little room
full of dust
your fingerprints
on the window
we’re not dead
but we’re trying
to figure this living-
together shit
and not take
our suitcases
boxes
of handwritten cards
Miami Post-Its
and the cats
oh my god the cats
litter the house with
stars we’d sweep
for trash night
on Thursday
with all the puffy
white bags
that sometimes rip
and leave grape
stems
on the sidewalk

 

(originally published in Eunoia Review, Winter 2020)

I Try to Keep Your Ice Cream Cake Cold

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

It is eighty-two degrees in Pittsburgh and my trunk
is crammed so your DQ cake sits in the passenger seat,

moves the same speed I do in my car in this orbit
in this galaxy. There is so much matter to keep cool

in the universe, but there’s sunshine through my wind-
shield and you– I know– thaw as a passenger beside

me. I’m doing what I can: aiming all the frigid vents
that way, holding a folder to shade you. I drive fifty-

five in a thirty-five to avoid my mind entertaining a
milky flood mixed with dust, dog hair, cookie crumbs,

and lust pooling where you are, your name in icing
illegible– it’s fine, for now. Don’t freak out. I am

floating over a bridge, the sun forever taunting,
and soon I know you’ll go, in one way or another,

into the mouth of a thankful person– whether me,
trying to save you from this heat, or you, radiant

as the sun, seeing celestial bodies who– for at
least this rotation– you know revolve around you.

 

(originally published in Dodging the Rain, Spring 2020)

Halloween Party – A Year After the Synagogue Shooting

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

a year goes quick but it’s enough of a time shift   a mind shift
to pretend we were in paradise with our friends   a steaming mug
of cider   I had a handle on     donning a black wig    forgetting
seemed the natural progression of things    no masks    no monsters
in our midst    no guns   in our field of vision    truly this was
paradise   sometimes it seems a risk every time we enter public
space   this morning I felt there were sinister forces     beyond
my control   that I couldn’t blame on hangover   it was in the gob
of spider ferns unfolding    it was in the wind     a stranger waving
to me   waiting at a crosswalk     America I only feel safe inside
my shadowed home   doors locked   curtains drawn    I felt the lips
of unspeakable tragedy drawing me in for a kiss   and I pulled my
mouth away    to run to Netflix      Mindhunter      Manhunt:
Unabomber     Dexter    so many monsters   wearing masks   this
paranoia’s a fog    lingering     never have I wanted a dog  more
just to add one layer of protection    past the window’s breaking
glass    the shards and sharp teeth   are everywhere this life   if I
knew where  to look and where I know I should

(originally published in Carpe Bloom, Winter 2019)

The Bucket

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Ripples of water
extend into days

we are wordless
with each other.

A storm breaks,
a dog whimpers.

We hear the groaning
Earth shifting

over countless hours
into the endless sea.

I’ve had enough
of windows,

where dreams
are a quick glance

over another
unfinished drink

in the middle
of the day.

(originally published in Count Seeds With Me, Spring 2022)

In Waves

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

It comes in waves, the grief, though you laugh
as you say so, because we are in the Atlantic,
children again, uppercutting large tides,
and I never learned to swim, but the saying–
the metaphor– is true, the water is relentless,
and we were states away from the hospital,
where your father was, when you got the
call, and later, in our hotel’s game room,
there was a balancing act– you, your family,
the ping-pong paddles on the black table,
the plastic balls rolling slowly onto the floor
at the end of another meaningless game, the
bouncing, then physics, entropy ending–
how else to reconcile lost time? This dusting,
this airing out, now, swimsuits soaked from
the salt of the sea, this fabric, this residue
dripping off of this vacation into the old
Civic, the broken A/C, the windows’ open
breeze, silence of the road lodged between
green hills, so endless, our breathing.

 

(originally published in Creative Writing Ink’s Monthly Contest, November 2019 Winner)

Film Industry Interview While Walking Bloomfield Bridge

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Wild this wind in Pittsburgh–
I am Bukowski reformed
twisting through steel
structures teeth gleaming.

Synthesis of former lives–
Columbus, Los Angeles
drunken pursuit of art
now an upstream leaf.

Marginalia within pages
of tattered library books–
I’ve so little to say you
hear a deep, empty well.

To march back into
my film-reel past
and gloss over poetry–
ghost cleaning gutters.

Allow some space
within my wanting.
My heart an old lens
zooming into the river.

 

(originally published in The Aurorean, Spring 2020)

Bowie

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Dog through the window– charcoal snow
and peanut-speckle brushstrokes– I watch you
served by our server on the patio under

Azorean’s white umbrella. If only I could be
of service to a creature so brown-eyed and sacred.
I want to be good, too, and melt the heart of people

I encounter. But I am out of it– I still feel new here
and spend my workweeks isolated and curious
for the world I miss around me, its strangers

a wild pack wandering the streets, searching
for any scent that spells joy. How mine smells of cinnamon
blocked by endless windows overlooking a sea of blue

recycling trucks inside a sharp metal fence, and– even now–
I peer through glass, smelting, as our server rubs your head,
as passers-by smile as they go wherever they must go.

I want to be unleashed, too– to put both knees on
concrete, pet the fur between your ears, and
inhale, together, Saturday’s shared freedom.

 

(originally published in Hello America, Fall 2019)

Tree of Life

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

candlelight vigil
in the gunmetal streets

sharp rain sinking
into pittsburgh’s deep roots

two blocks
from your parents’

the synagogue where
your mom taught preschool

community
congregation

drowned &
drowning

the crowd’s
gathering silence

small fires
between bodies

we canceled
the halloween party

to gather at lilly’s
for proximity

how close
to eternity

we become
in each other

(originally published in Thin Air Online, Fall 2019)

Last Memorial Day

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

We walked to the Cultural District to be
at the jazz festival & basked in the sax of Nubya

Garcia beside men on mushrooms grooving
underneath eternal heat, sweat in the air

everywhere. It was a rare off being free
to roam in the spring-summer-autumn days

of Lone Wolf. This year, we seek public stairs
down the warehouse side of Liberty Avenue,

past the church turned brewery & power
plant we nearly lived across from. Above’s the plentiful

hill with blue water tower, where we pretend the mayor
lives inside its steel blue dome with all the rich hidden

in the hills with their crow vision. The community
pool is empty. The boring streets to drive through

are the interesting ones to hike with uneven brick &
ramshackle storefronts never noticed. Here’s a record

shop for anarchists. In this decrepit year we look to fill
my head with chaos to make sense of the field around us.

We have been walking & walking the sunset magenta
over Bloomfield Bridge yet summer seems a year away.


(originally published in Selcouth Station, Spring 2021)