short north

Local Bar’s Annual Water Balloon Battle

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Yes I am drinking Oktoberfest beer is my raft
But listen Local Bar celebrated birthday number four
And held a water balloon war at Goodale Park
My army heaved water balloons at the other’s soft music
It ended sharply in a siren call of silence
Because we ran out of inflatables
Red blue green yellow scattered in the grass
Parsing through the blades during cleanup
Someone mentioned we’re grazing
While picking up the latex shards
I thought the animals we unintentionally kill!
Deer need stomach surgery after eating sugary fragments
And penguins in the arctic beg us
Please unplug your computers you’ll run out of poetry
Deep recess of eventual yearning
We freeze in the act of self-entertainment
Becoming self-immolators
For the love of a lover or for love of ourselves
We find ourselves stricken by wants we cannot control
And they will come to control us

 

(originally published in Cabildo Quarterly, Fall 2019)

Late

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I am sorry I asked you
out piss-drunk at Mikey’s
at 3 A.M. a month
after we stopped
talking on Tinder

you told me I think
the time has passed
which was the most
polite way you could
have considering

this man you never met
came up to you erratic
and slurring–
men can be time
bombs single

and desperate
actions to regret
I should
have apologized
sooner

(originally published in Umbrella Factory, Fall 2018)

High Street Construction

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

The busiest road in Columbus is an obstacle course: orange cones
and road closeds (open to local traffic only). Here, in the heart
of Ohio, we build by tearing down. A red crane leaps and a small
business closes, resurrects as Target– bullseye– the suit, the lipstick.

Soon you, too, will not be able to afford to live here. The remodeled
library is threatened by the bones across the street: a nine-story
building in the midst of construction. Wind whips plastic
bags that hang from its scaffolds and I see the ghost–

the restaurant in its wake. Dark clouds
gather above, knowing they, too, have displaced.

 

(originally published in Literary Orphans, 2018)

Pool Party

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Yesterday we were at a pool party
attended by only a few others. It was
dog-friendly, as it was last week,
so the lone, small white dog
lapped water into his mouth
while on an inflatable raft and we
stood in silence and watched as he
drank the blue that held the specks
of fallen leaves and submerged spiders
while our beers turned warm. Last week
we were at a party in the same house
with a few of the same people but the
sun was out and I did not have to keep
wondering if you were okay, if you would
dip your feet into the clear with me and all
the people we did not know then because,
last week, a stranger in a bar did not yet
shake your body and bite you
long after you begged him not to–
no, the night before last week’s party
we danced to nineties hip-hop
inside the shadows of others until
we could not help but mine our
bodies for gold. Last week, we laughed
as the dog lapped the pool into his mouth
but watching, now, we know there are some
who force a tongue at whatever water
they see fit, how they lap and lap
until there’s nothing but a splash
of what they lapped at all.

 

(originally published in The Collapsar, Summer 2016)

Runner

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

You always have to run.

Short North to downtown,
city to city, Indiana

to Tennessee–
one shoe on gravel,

the other careening
through time and space

into a green
where you are unknown

and your running shoes are empty
at our red swing’s feet.

I know you never run to leave,
driving your horizon eyes

miles to sun– and you, after its setting,
glide beside each highway’s unlit rivers

on the bridge of the median, drunk
from driving so long under moon,

far from where our empty bottles
collect in a skyward infinity,

a mountain of clinking memories–
a marathon, a gap traversed quickly.

(originally published in VerseWrights)