pittsburgh

A Light Snow Through the Window

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Out of all activities
to do in the world,
we choose to watch

what melts. The sugar-
frosted grass, low hills, love
of our red-brick building.

If our conversations
are jet streams, if high-
altitude, high stakes,

tension– let me
please leave and be
reborn as something cold

and forgettable.
What dinosaur wanted
to become a fossil?

In our years together
we accumulated enough
to burrow deep into

the earth. Millions
of years from now,
what some sentience

will discover is that
we were once separate.

(originally published in The Field Guide, Fall 2023)

No One Asked

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

When Josh lingers at the end
of the workday, I think of Stand
By Me: kids’ backs covered
in leeches in the woods–
can’t push away or peel
him off, his limb-thin branches
that walk out into the dark
parking lot and back in
to bug us, again and
again, scribbling his
footprints all over concrete
in a scuffmark infinity.
I have never seen someone
so happy to have shot someone.
He returned one
weekend from Albany,
roaring with energy, eager
to tell the whole office
that burglars stole half-
million dollar lamps
from his house, but he’s
glad they did not get it
all, and how he perched
for several hours on his
staircase, alongside the fading
sun– the story convoluted
and convulsed in his hands,
the several times I heard
it told in the hallway,
in the kitchen, showing
photos of hideous antiques.
He claims to know they would
be coming. And that he
was getting updates
on the critical person’s
condition, and the words
come bursting out of his
mushroom cloud mouth
that he would have loved.

(originally published in Toasted Cheese Literary Magazine, Spring 2024)

Closure

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

there is no end
to wanting a better
anything. I have
driven through
stop signs on rural
roads in afternoon
light envisioning
the reality where
I have arrived
faster at our house
and you’re happy
about it for those
few extra seconds
but time is fog
that dissipates
anyway, being
that yesterday
we loved each other
and today we
are sitting at the top
of the stairs to our
bedroom petting
the cat who survived
our downfall
and mourning the one
whose heart clotted
because of it. you
notice bubbles of
water in the blue
textured wall and
we burst into
the day’s remainder,
moving temporary
belongings around
again, this time
with no effort
of emotion, no pull-
each-other-closer
because the house
has seen its share
of endings and
beginnings, I’m
sure, if we are
to frame it in
those terms
already the memories
have taken control.

(originally published in OPEN: a journal of arts & letters, Fall 2024)

I have been drowning in work

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

but the sun still floats past 8 PM
& I wonder where time went
sunk in the blue glow
of overheating machines

it is Monday
and everyone hates Mondays
because this past weekend
I went to a house concert
in the state I once lived in

only to return to the wheel
and drive a few marathons
windows open music loud
past spontaneous roadkill
and honeybee fields

last night I slept on a pile
of unsigned documents
dreamt of paper cuts
and Parochial school

I bought green bananas
for the office
and by the end
of the day
they were brown

(originally published in The /temz/ Review, Spring 2025)

The Dog Is Always Greener

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

the dog is always
greener

in the land of
pleasant living

if we could pour
our hands

over the promise
of fence

into wild dandelion
weeds of

contentment
on a fake summer

day
the reticent

dog is the one
to pet

not the meme
celebrity

husky
or perhaps

we want
to live again

in the way
that dogs do

refreshing
the page

every fourteen
seconds

or days or
years

the grandma
calls this celebration

of life a resort
and we call

the dealer’s hand
too forgetful

to recall
the spade

drafted in
the lush

unkempt
garden

shuffle
the cards

repeatedly

to delay
the inevitable

(originally published in Pinhole Poetry, Fall 2023)

Our Ritual

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I kiss the cheek of my cat
   she hums in her sputtering
      engine the comfort
  of our ritual she twitches
         on my chest stares
              deep into my eyes
        our noses
                  sniffing
                              each other

                truth is
                      her teeth
            reek of yesterday
                  but I am trying
                          to rid myself
                  of the past
                                year

(originally published in The Gorko Gazette, Summer 2024)

The Shrubs of Doubt Were Misplaced

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Still, the dogs watch me from behind
a fence when I walk the opposite route–

against traffic on Gross Street–
the view changes enough to convince

me I am in a different place in my life
with its industrial constellations,

a parking garage sparkling with hovering
hospital lights while skeleton neighbors

decorate homes for Halloween and blue
jays all seek a different weather. Maybe

October chill has knocked a new belief
into my teeth. Brick by brick I walk

by buildings of my past that survived
into the current, too, and a leaf

from an unseen tree floats
onto the chest of my charcoal

jacket. I pin it there
for the days I will forget.

(originally published in Ariel Chart, Spring 2024)

On a Zoom Call with the World

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

the crows are stage left with nails in their beaks
it took centuries for modern civilization to collapse
but it is happening now and we are all here for it

looking toward the future (naïve to hold a telescope)
I see ants collapsed just outside a giant mound of
peanut butter powder coated in poison we were

feeding ourselves (and we fed so long) with words
and power with which we chose to destroy ourselves
and we are all here for it drowning in the rising seas

(originally published in Flights, Fall 2023)

Stand

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I am begging for you to be well.
  At Spirit in Lawrenceville.
Lung cancer
                                 I can’t
  stand this for you. I
love you enough to know
this world
is too   crowded without
you & me standing
around, heads bobbing,
at another live show
    at a smoky dive bar,
asking each other
what we want next
& how much more
dearly in this life can
we stand   to lose?

(originally published in Ink Pantry, 2025)