quarantine

Look for Me, Someday, in a Sentimental Ad

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I dive into a fresh pool of shining glass–
who wants to spend their years with me?

The new-city-me screams its lungs out for
you. Looking to the past, I fall in love

again. I’ll be promiscuous when
unemployed. I can’t face life

pursuing absolute perfection. Maybe
I will soften my hair, finally. My cat

may not be into this. We lay sideways
in a beam of sun on dust-layered carpet,

moving our eyes to the wall’s tricks of light.

(originally published in Count Seeds With Me [Ethel Zine and Micro-Press], Spring 2022)

August, 2020 (Five Months Quarantined)

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

sorry about all this junk everywhere
we won’t leave the house it’s a hundred
degrees heat the same rooms the same
clouds the same dust nothing to escape
so much shit you yell all of it is oil slick
off our bones if I could sell my veins I
wouldn’t but someone would you would
purchase them and ornament my body
sell my cheap taxidermy that’s just how
it is there ain’t enough drugs in the world
to convince me otherwise there are
I’ll trade you thirty dollars for an exciting
week enough for an air bag each small
car ride home do you have weed? what
should we do?  these nightmares every day
give you nightmares every night they hit
you in the chest and your mind just screams
no more what is the problem do you care?
let’s play fucking music we need blood
so we can sweeten so we can sleep finally
classic rock we got the sixties beat
let’s drink until it’s cold until heaven
is an illusion we did it now look

(originally published in BarBar, Summer 2023)

Nest

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

All this nesting leaves me
exhausted. When you awaken
I am too tired to live. One day
the hawk will know this. Sunrise,
the same tender air of earth to feed
new omens. The day a hill
between thunderstorms and ruddy
sunsets, with water neither
ephemeral nor potable.
Quartz trembles and falls
into my mouth. Words
say whatever is in them;
they always fall. A cowbird
on a branch sends out her scent.
(I realize these rocks are symbolic,
a character for which a metaphor
has never been written.) My nest
surrounded by stones has come
to speak in ways that neither
of us can hear. The nest is not
a cage, yet the absence of
a nest is also not a cage.
Inside whichever– I
know you have loved me.

(originally published in Capsule Stories, Summer 2021)

Findley Lake

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I have lived long enough
to know to stay
out of the water. Bug guts

a crushed red berry beside
me. If there’s poison off
the dock– weeds in everlasting

web, I have a lot of gnats
to catch along the muddy
path around the pond of singing

birds and bullfrogs leading
the way to Destiny’s house.

(originally published in Roi Faneant, Summer 2022)

Video Games on New Year’s Day

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

grape stem the fruit centipede

          parched time

                    a skin between my teeth

fingernails tapping on blue porcelain bowl

          then the controller my hand’s touched everything in this place

thanks for your spider fingers on the soft of my chest

          lips purple with last night’s wine

                   new year burst with pessimism not

optimism beginnings are overrated

          I do best when I don’t know where I’m going

(originally published in A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Winter 2023)

The Tendril

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Friends seem to love it
but the flowering plant
in the bathroom creeps
me out. There is a half-
empty/full glass of water
on the shelf beside
the dinosaur-cat mug.
I wonder about that,
too. I guess it depends
on how you look at
the world: the stone-
green leaf reaches for
your hand or punches
at your jugular. I want
to say I don’t have
trust issues but
you say you’re taking
a shower and shut
the door, but I know
the steam is watering
the tendrils. These
leaps of light
I can’t provide.

(originally published in Ink Sac, Winter 2022)

For Exercise and Variety

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

walking around my home wearing sun
glasses FitBit records silent steps on white

wood floors creak a silver SUV whirs past
window no peephole a dead end slightly

darker shade how my eyes reckon
in multiple lights their very veins

stretch and pulsate spectrum my entire
field ever present ever pressured

the world in layers I perceive body
as hunger pushing into all frames

of frames of knick-knacks I need to
donate but fear the gift-givers will find out

one may ask that yodeling pickle wasn’t
good enough of course not what was ever

its purpose but to transfer to another hand
or be buried deep in dry and dying land

(originally published in Academy of the Heart and Mind, Spring 2023)

Lost

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

It is depressing to walk outside.
No one of no ones, my formlessness
would be dazzling, if you knew to
look, a vapor in the shape of memory.
I know the sensation of a crowd.
Faraway fear of missing out
in my own backyard– back
to that old mindset. Life of
lives– tenth iteration? I have
planted some sense of evolution.
Everyone’s growing gardens,
hunched over greens
of potted soils, warning
the world of rabbits. I
chase the idea I’ll never
be settled anywhere. Love
to be alone but don’t know
what to do with my hands
when I am. Nor could I be
a surgeon. Or a fisherman–
imagine me, who can’t swim,
casting a net into the lake.
A splash of water and I’m
wishing for a wishing well.

(originally published in Pomona Valley Review, Summer 2022)