pandemic

Gaze Down Not Eyes

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

skies are gray my mind
lives having dug through
refrigerator for the cookie
I thought Mark bicycled
more instead I went to
salami town I burnt
a hot dog yesterday
for backyard freedom
the weeds are cut
behind the wire
and we are paranoid
of visitors someone
knocked on our door
time turned to trickle
last week a snowstorm
somehow but I have not
witnessed any weather
in a while I avoid outside
and outside avoids
me we always have
had an awkward
wave as we both
put our heads down
then move quickly
another direction

(originally published in Subnivean Magazine, Winter 2021)

I have been having nightmares of a police state,

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

of walking down the street at night, red
and blue sirens wailing past, and people
being shot in front of me, their bodies
dragged across the sidewalk
out of view.

Maybe because I’ve binged
The Handmaid’s Tale
or work too much (stress
the swan song we stay singing).

Whatever the cause,
I live
in America, America,
America.

(originally published in Good Cop / Bad Cop: An Anthology (FlowerSong Press), Summer 2021)

Some Crimson Planet

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

When I am lonely,
it helps to not think
of the universe. I imagine

Earth buried in the darkest
cemetery, a headstone
with some space separating

it from the next.
I know there must be a
tenderness quotient

in the cosmos, a rose
on some crimson planet
blooming tall to wave

at me, its petals drifting
aimlessly through
a garden of light-

years. This distance
is more collective
than we know.

(originally published in South Florida Poetry Journal, Fall 2020)

Precedent

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

The sound of fascism is for a small
while less intrusive than the work

in progress on your neighbor’s wall,
which is also yours. 7 A.M. drills,

hammers infiltrating space.
Sun crystals shining through

bathroom window might say fall,
could say end. Dracaena sitting

in darkness on a different sill
amidst loud nearby noises.

Gonna see my family for the first
time in months. Whose side are they

on? I squeeze the lavender
satchel handed down from not-

my-grandma. All was passed
down from stars, but that is

a different story. Eternal light
in dust. What disgusting precedent.

The disturbed mornings
in which simply drinking

coffee hurts the backside
of my lower lip. Fish flesh.

I don’t know why the liquid
slashes me. That’s why

I drink so quickly.

(originally published in mutiny! magazine, Summer 2022)

A Morning in Knox, PA – September 2020

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

can’t risk having you fall in
           it’s the same blue blood buzzing everywhere
a spider’s on my face and all I see is dusk
     and lavender cornfields
you would tell me  if (I made your)  birthday a ruin, right?
you’d come out of (your   hole in) the ground,
help me navigate through      pink-spiked weeds?
every step I take close     bullfrog leaping into    moss
to escape me   I get it   I don’t know if it’s my intention
misplaced or if my body’s just unable to execute
       the further I walk from the house a little more it rains
       moths displaced little insects winging away
       each further step I take toward the lake

(originally published in Ginosko Literary Review, Fall 2021)

Two Days Before Final Fantasy VII Remake, Bernie Ends His Campaign

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

    to play a game is to simply look into a void I need
    to limit the amount my eyes (or else the world’s
            but a buttercream) I dream I dream in pixels
            nostalgia of many Midgars transformed in what to partake
but all these riches of revolution memory is a waterfall
rushing headfirst cold into pointy rocks I wanted to forget this good
            game with you knowing neither of us could afford the new

(originally published in Marias & Sampaguitas, Summer 2021)

Before Coronavirus

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

We would shake hands in public but embrace
in private the kitchen counters I’d pour myself

a purple punch. Slung ear ice. Not much music
from the grass but songbirds chatter refrigerator

hum. My speedometer reached a hundred barren
roads leading to summer rooms. Fingerprints

everywhere. We touched everything tortillas
knobs ladles. We even touched each other’s

faces, then inhaled.

(originally published in Ginosko Literary Journal, 2021)

Hog

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

there is no wrong way to eat
a hot dog there is no right
to eat a dog there is no hot
dog hot popsicle of pig
meat slathered in existential
ketchup bread-claustrophobic

                                                                    *

         once on a drive home from Central Catholic
         I stopped at the Dairy Queen Drive-Thru
                 and asked for hot dog wrapped in lettuce
                 I was more hypochondriac at sixteen
                 than at thirty-two anyway the kid
                 at the window said they couldn’t
                 but I insisted and the manager
                 smuggled the long sizzling dog in wet
                 lettuce I carry that shame in the trash
                 bag of my trunk to this day

                                                                    *

        pig meat
                       pig meat
                                       in a sleeping bag of green

                                                                    *

        there is no way to eat a dog
        there are ways to eat a hot dog
             I am a bog I am the bog I am
breakfast lunch dinner brunch midnight snack
  everlasting bun communion holy
water life I down through days and lick my fingers
after rough vigorous handwashing
               I’ve opened plastic package
               set skillet to flame
               lain logs on drizzled oil

                                                                    *

                       the celebrity chef in my mind
is me I documented cooking when I lived
in my car. That was my true potential. Oh, swine,
               you’re years beyond capable
yet I drove halfway across the country
to do what competitors do, which is down
hundreds of you. Joey Chestnut the undisputed
master after decades of dogs.

                                                                    *
                    Went to a dollar dog minor
                    league game twenty cents per dog flies
                    buzzing in orbit of condiments
                    five the limit at the window so all
                could see I had the buns. One each for
                     STRENGTH. ACCEPTANCE.
                        CONFIDENCE. GRACE.
                                   AMBITION.

                                                                    *

One inning was all
it took and I was alone in my new
                        city full of my father’s love
                        of baseball and barbecues. Now
                        there was an undisputed grill master.
                        Everyone knows one. I am not one.
                        There is no way to cook.
                        There is a way.
               Wayne was over and we flicked
               lit matches with our middle fingers
               from thumbs into ready
               charcoal to get the grill going.
We walked away and waited for
an action-movie explosion
but there was no ignition.

                                                                    *


                                                                                     My whole life I have been walking
                                                                                     away, not turning back to look.

(originally published in HAD, Summer 2022)

Inadequate Help

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I counted twelve hundred drops of rain
to cull the drought in the desert

but at some indeterminate future
coordinate. There isn’t even a crowd

to be lost in anymore– human bodies
dissipate into pixels on a stuttering

screen. Listen to her voice. Listen
to his voice. What we are drinking

when we speak is a potent purple
cocktail: dragonfruit, chia,

pineapple, banana, ginger,
vodka, rum. I know you

are close when you made it
but the rain’s still far away.

(originally published in San Antonio Review, Fall 2020)