stark

To Those Who Say High School Is the Best Four Years

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Being in marching band did not mean I avoided
everyone else in our Catholic school of zombies
marching to the beat of our grandparents’ music–

tradition in Massillon, Ohio is sacrosanct. God
first, then football. Green fields of broken heads,
eternal salvation the end-of-life touchdown.

I find tradition such a demeaning, self-fulfilling
prophecy. That there could be an expiration date
for the best years of your life, all of which
escaped the womb of your tiny hometown.

(originally published in Fine Lines, 2022)

Clinton, Ohio

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Where I lived was a quiet crescendo
of snow six months of the year
& mosquito summers wearing shorts
into the sweating night

Where I lived had piano thunderstorm concertos
jolting the elderly house’s bones
with frenetic fingers, ivory paint,
red bricks

Where I lived was a lonesome walking trail
where morning chirps of blue jays went unnoticed.
Beds of acorns lined the autumn grass,
a kind of fallout for the process of aging
and the act of leaving

Always, now, in thought, it is a shoebox
of dandelions that writhe when I pet the cold cardboard–
hello, you are home, tonsils– my heart
can’t handle the hand-shaped imprints
from so far away

 

(originally published in Rubbertop Review – Volume VII, 2015)