science

Vibration of a Single Degree

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

When a system is given
an initial input of velocity,

it will vibrate freely
upon release. The ground

will undergo occasional
displacement. In running,

we invite earthquakes
with periodic force. In leaving,

the engine drives
with rising speeds.

In real systems, energy
dissipates. The system damps,

often unnoticeably. When friction
ends, the memories displace,

and your face becomes
a jumbled mess of cables,

of mouths in wired eyes
so tangled by the heart.

 

(originally published in The Magnolia Review, Fall 2017)

Kurt Says There Is No Such Thing as Information Loss

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

You can recover anything. If you can’t,
you will. What you seek exists
but has left for the black hole of knowledge
steady at the center of the galaxy.
You will become a different person,
renovate the house but keep the windows.
You will find a new lover but process
bits of data still there– the comparisons
and air hurtle toward end-time, the end
line unquantifiable by any metrics of the heart,
of time complete and incomplete starts.
There is a long black hair lodged in your beard
from a lover though the body has moved on.
You forget the names of things you know
but know what they are, how you can have mind
without soul but no soul without mind.
You can live a new life
without losing the old.

 

(originally published in the hour after happy hour, Fall 2017; also published in The Cadaverine Magazine)

Rotor

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

If you drive a car whose
combustion confuses fuel

for air, the engine will quiver
along smooth concrete.

At certain speeds, a clanking
rotor is similar

to the natural cadence
of heartbeats in embrace:

amplitude becomes a deafening
in the stillness of night.

Let a rotating machine of mass
be mounted on a stiff spring

to fix support. The pieces
must move vertically in

a single degree of freedom
even if the rotor is unbalanced,

its hypnotic center missing
one valve’s intake,

forgetting the other’s exhaust.

 

(originally published in Lakeview International Journal of Literature and Arts, Summer 2017)

Rotational Quantum States

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

We have so far to fall.

Excited electrons
weaken in descent.

Photons of longer wavelength
are fluorescence.

Do not wait for morning to end.
Allow its gradual mean to untangle

the phosphorescence
of a lover’s vine,
complex and intimate.

Coefficients teach us
probabilities for absorption
and emission are the same.

We take what we give.

The initial absorption
puts electrons
in a more stable state.

Hold light for as long as you can.

 

(originally published in The Write Place at the Write Time, Summer 2017)

Entropy

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

the mylar unicorn balloon juts out of my moodlighting lamp
& won’t lose air sealed lips but the horn’s starting to sag
it’s not sad it’s entropy how slowly things around you deteriorate
I look at my unmade bed & puppy fur on the floor & the wind
beats at the window it’s the first day of spring & my voice is hoarse
with allergens so texting you downstairs & we’re scared something
bad may come of us that our own house will fill with mercury whether
in tapwater or shower water or the plug to come undone that causes
the washing machine to overflow and it will

(originally published in Maudlin House, Spring 2017)