sara

One Example of Privilege – December, 2016

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

We were about to decorate the Christmas
tree in the living room, blue
lights and tangled cords, when Jeff said
we beat the Dakota Access Pipeline.
We agreed this was reason to celebrate
then swept loose pines off the floor.
Paige hung the usual ornaments: red
orbs, angels. Sara served hot chocolate
with cocoa powder, skim milk, vanilla
extract– warm in the heat of our home,
far from Standing Rock. I thought of Sophie,
who built teepees in the cold to stand with
the Sioux– how they risked frost and flame
to stay alive, and many of them did. But
when Long called to catch up that day
we didn’t talk about it.

 

(originally published in Pomona Valley Review, Summer 2019)

In Pittsburgh, the First Time,

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

you told me Friendship is a road
split by two roads, parallel to Liberty,
and I told you that was a poem,
but you said, no, I’m just giving you
direction, and I looked up from your eyes
to the green sign reading Friendship Ave
and knew what you meant. Friendship–
we had yet to spend our first night
in the city, one that would end in
a dark cocktail bar for a dance party
that never materialized. In the morning,
we rode rented bicycles with bent
spokes and a click in their spinning
and I could only follow your lead
and cycle through streets still unfamiliar
to me– we weaved through lonely roads
to the Strip District, then stopped
at the Sixth Street Bridge to admire
the glimmer of the river that warm
winter day and continued until
we found the hill to Randyland
too steep to ride so, off our bikes,
we walked side-by-side up the path
until reaching our destination;
we locked our broken bikes
and kept walking.

 

(originally published in Bindweed Magazine, Winter 2019)

Valentine for Sara Rosenblum

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Fuck fake corporate holidays–

                                      ok, I said it.
Drained
our hearts fighting capitalism
but the system says February 14
is the best day to say you love
your person, to shower them
in candy and chocolate until
they can taste no more sweet.
                                                This is
our first Valentine and I miss you
terribly in these long hours
we spend at places we’re paid
to spend our lives in to survive
and what else would we spend
on but sweets?
                                       In the past,
I’ve wanted to take a baseball bat to
the Valentine Day piñata and smash
out all its greed–
                                     this year, though,
you are my Valentine, and every day
I spend with you already I want to bury you
in a mountain of CVS candy and chocolate,
hold you close to me and whisper
I love you, I love you, I love you–

                        ok, today’s a good excuse.

(Originally published in Magnolia Review, Summer 2018)

Memory Foam

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

here I look at the same room I’ve spent many nights in
the diffuser diffusing the world’s hues into you & me
the cat composed of smoke
Sara takes a sick day & the room crawls with veins
I watch my own age spiderweb into me flipping pages in a manuscript
this room is made of hair this room breathes fur webs
this is what brains are made of
every imprint of hand
when you sit down this bed this ocean floor this beginning

 

(originally published in Ariel Chart, Fall 2017)

Our Cafe as Morning Vacation

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

On the patio drinking iced coffee
you write a letter to Jane Fonda
telling her you always thought
you’d be an actress– that distant
magical woman with a collection of
workout VHS tapes, one of which you
bought when thrifting. The sun is out. Lawyers
beside us talk about renovations to streets
near campus but from straw to lips– you and I,
our city infrastructure’s solid. We do not
fill our holes with asphalt to build new roads
lined with palm trees and your bagel stays fresh
in morning cool that feels like Palm Springs,
California. I am somewhere old yet unfamiliar:
a vacation in our neighborhood, a beach
house along the shores of the Scioto river,
oldies guitar strumming through air
like a boat guided by breeze–
fond of the present, sailing upstream.

 

(originally published in The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Spring 2018)

Earth Angel

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

microphone in hand
                                        the gutter of volumetric gain

to finally sing gin (out of the system
                                                                         sky an ocean of lights)

the star made of you-matter: gold voice hot collision
where bar’s empty souls listening clink glasses

                            then rise in song to celebrate your living

Sunrise

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Driving west to Columbus from my partner’s house
in Pittsburgh early morning and on I-70 around six
in the rearview there’s a giant burst of orange light nearly
deafening in its glory and my first thoughts are fire and fury
then you’re gone but no it’s a heavenly sunrise and I can’t
remember the last time I witnessed the sun rise though a few
days ago she and I were in Vermont about to hike an
overlook before sunrise to watch it but we couldn’t will
ourselves out of bed and what a world to wake to now
driving alone this big dramatic ball of fury revealing its
magnificence bathing land in light before it softens
            how it could have been one or the other
a burst of beauty or unspeakable tragedy yet from a distance
a bomb might seem as beautiful and harmless as a sunrise
at least until the smoke how with fire too there’s a kind
of enchantment but for this a split second then the anguish
and fury for this sunrise greeting a thousand grieving days

 

(originally published in Old Red Kimono, Spring 2018)

Penny / Heart

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

& when you sleep (waking
life is not cheap)
I know our love’s worth
something

out on our back patio
drinking bad wine on Tuesday
& the dog can’t decide
which side of the glass

he wants to live
on, the wild & murk
or the safe & stone.

I’m living life under
fluorescents or artificial
light, got a wallet made
of air I’m thumbing through,

somehow living & learning
despite the change
or lack of– glass

clinks on bronze floor.
I’m saying I love the sundown
& evening air, my fingers
locked in yours, unloose.

 

(originally published in Panoplyzine, Winter 2017)