sex

Hamburglar

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I’d do anything
for a cheeseburger
after a hangover

rob a bank of beef patties
to settle my beer belly

drive through suburbs
shooting holes
in the ozone

fingerguns pointed
in the ubiquitous direction
of hunger

my consumption
would satiate a hamlet

I drink
each excess
down

as Ronald
desires me to do

did you see the videos

pink slime resurrected
as hamburger Lazarus

but if I won the jackpot
I know a Big Mac
would be my first meal

golden arches
a chorus of mmms
echoing through cortex

processed organs
replacing orgasms

is that on the dollar menu

(originally published in HAD, Summer 2022)

Early Twenties

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

At Giesen Haus late, we drink long
islands on empty stomachs until
we make nacho shots – chips loaded
with beans, jalapeños, cheese, the finisher
being the rest of our twenty-
two-ounce Doppelrocks. Because
the Haus is closing (we do not
know soon, for good), we
walk the blurred street to
The Basement, get another ale,
maybe two. We tweet Rob
Delaney when we decide we need
thirteen more drinks before the end.
We make another shot, the Dog Blowjob–
Raspberry, Blue Raspberry, Jameson–
IHOP at 2 AM, our waitress tells us a time
she was stuck in the snow, drunk, and a
customer paid her for sex. Cinnamon
pancakes, hash browns, we wait what feels
like forever amid endless summer now
that we are adults. 5 AM we walk back
to Giesen Haus and somehow, I drive us back
now. We cruise down Whipple to Bloom’s
hypnotic Wild, witnessing the sun attempt
to rise from the depths of night. In a few hours
I finish reading Conrad’s Heart of Darkness,
which I want to like, then watch birds
in branches with binoculars received
in the mail. I peer through all the nothingness
green. I start Siddhartha, play Skyrim, binge
Breaking Bad. Later in the week, I put in
thirty hours of restaurant work with
all the time in the world.

(originally published in Dreich Magazine, Summer 2020)

Shots

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

At the bar, I ask if you want shots.
You say, no– 2X, so I ask is that Dos
Equis? We laugh, then you tell me

2X is an IPA from Southern Tier.
When I order PBR you fire back
I don’t do that shit anymore.

At our table you lean into me,
staring at the red, paint-splattered wall.
You say I went to school with someone

who was killed in the shooting last
weekend. I think– there were two–
then ask if you’re okay. You

cock your hand on my thigh
and lift your bottle to toast me–
our clink of drinks a cold hard

cheers to the body of a rifle.
The skin through the holes
in our ripped jeans is heavy

against each other. You whisper in my ear
the world has too many people.
You shoot to the opposite

side of the table and ask,
how many people have you had sex with
who are dead? I say none that I know of.

And knowing you want me
to ask you, too, I mouth,
you?

Your smile loads a magazine,
amber bullets in your eyes–
you flash me the peace sign.

(originally published in Red Eft Review, Summer 2020)

Click-Clack

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

we didn’t do yoga except your feet
on my shoulders & months later

you zip past me with my new lover
on your bicycle      the acacias stink

of memory      you see us arm
in arm on the way to the library

as we used to     too    but when we
kissed was a web spiders clung to

a hunger many legs couldn’t satisfy

 

(originally published in WINK, Winter 2020)

Schizotrope

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Finale was the first program I used to
compose music, in eighth grade, back
when my concern was to score colorful,
simple role-playing games I had created
with RPG Maker 2000. A couple years
later, I used new software, hunched
in the dark of my mom’s living
room, toying with FL Studio’s virtual
equalizers, knobs, and keyboard to craft
Schizotrope, the name of the album
I wrote to process a breakup,
an attempt to conjure you through
some combination of melody
and soundfont. When I listen
now, I hear us both a kind
of cacophonous ghost. Back
then, it was simple to slip on
cheap earbuds and recede into
my childhood bedroom, where we
did what I thought– when growing
up– was growing up. So shifted the
trajectory of my songs. And speaking
again of early sex, I sang off-key into my
coffee-stained Hewlett-Packard’s built-in
microphone, made a MIDI sound
marginally authentic to gift myself, in
the future, reverberations of my coping.

 

(originally published in Artvilla: Poetry Life & Times, Fall 2019)

Kimmy Granger

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

The green blanket over your head–
Kimmy Granger gets fucked
by a fake photographer
on your iPhone in my hand.
Meanwhile, you ride me, moaning–
it’s snowing– December’s waning
autumn days– awaiting a kind of fate
under flicked-off lights
in the gray of afternoon.
Before this, we reminisced about
the early days– laying in bed my hand
in your hair listening to music.
Then late July laying in grass saying
the ways we make each other happy.
Which is why I must rewind this clip
over and over to the part where Kimmy
is smiling and laughing before
the whole thing starts and
I pine for the blanket, your
green thread and lint.

 

(originally published in Ghost City Review, Winter 2018)

Zen of the Clattering Ceiling Fan

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

These Tinder dates and hookups.
Teeth kisses and unfamiliar homes.
You count cold days and they are circular.

There’s a blue hue from the window.
M snores in unison with the universe
of her bedroom. I can’t sleep, so

I become the fan. After some time,
transcendence is the blade that cuts
through stale air, makes the room breathe.

 

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

Used to Play Baseball

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I am a nail-punctured tire
the rubber smell
with you, unfinished, our wheels –

constant motion
squealing for still.
Our bodies, bands stretched and heaved

in bundles of clothing
(deserted starling
feathers scattered and–)

navigating roadmaps to our cores,
you can reach the end
and pluck what you want.

I just want you to see me for who I am
when your legs aren’t clamped around me,
the squeeze in the mitt.

 

(originally published in First Literary Review – East, Spring 2018)

Tea

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

the kettle sings I sift the mint
from your leaves become morning
branches inhale steam tethered to
white string high held by fingers
that’ll dig too much into bark
rotting wood from childhood
a treehouse built with dirt hands
and axe planked into core of
every fragile oak soon to fall

 

(originally published in Common Ground Review, Spring 2018)