strange

The Tendril

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Friends seem to love it
but the flowering plant
in the bathroom creeps
me out. There is a half-
empty/full glass of water
on the shelf beside
the dinosaur-cat mug.
I wonder about that,
too. I guess it depends
on how you look at
the world: the stone-
green leaf reaches for
your hand or punches
at your jugular. I want
to say I don’t have
trust issues but
you say you’re taking
a shower and shut
the door, but I know
the steam is watering
the tendrils. These
leaps of light
I can’t provide.

(originally published in Ink Sac, Winter 2022)

Puzzle Deep

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Here’s a pony you don’t like.
This time, I’m holding you
and telling you the truth about
how, at camp, you fell into a
ditch of clay and nearly
trampled to donate– you
thought– to the afterlife a fly
on a turkey carcass. Life is
full, a morbid castle–
a bird plunked in traffic,
an idea of being able
to survive atop the hood.
Your sister split the life
into more than a half,
a divorce from life and
tenant. The cost was
the roof, and you paid
someone to fix it, as
loyal as you are
to the world, soap-
scum coating it. Please
forgive yourself. I thought
you were a legend. Please,
never step toward the rail.

(originally published in Divot, Spring 2023)

For Exercise and Variety

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

walking around my home wearing sun
glasses FitBit records silent steps on white

wood floors creak a silver SUV whirs past
window no peephole a dead end slightly

darker shade how my eyes reckon
in multiple lights their very veins

stretch and pulsate spectrum my entire
field ever present ever pressured

the world in layers I perceive body
as hunger pushing into all frames

of frames of knick-knacks I need to
donate but fear the gift-givers will find out

one may ask that yodeling pickle wasn’t
good enough of course not what was ever

its purpose but to transfer to another hand
or be buried deep in dry and dying land

(originally published in Academy of the Heart and Mind, Spring 2023)

Thirty (and a Half)

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I ate five scoops of Breyers chocolate-peanut butter
ice cream and still want more–

                                  this, after two “meals” of beef-
flavored nothing noodles (Maruchan ramen)

I’m thirty (and a half)

When do I stop running
from “the good future”

                                      I see it through the
crystal balls of rich kids’ Instagrams

Say it with me:

                  I AM LIVING IN THE PAST.

                                  clap emoji

                  I WANT WHAT YOU HAVE.

                        clap emoji clap emoji

                          dancing girl emoji

                         But here’s the thing.

Earth spins so much it’s dizzying.
I’m running the opposite direction
to meet my past self but that fucker
doesn’t want to rendezvous.

                                          The future called
and told me to put the phone down, you’re
sweating arsenic
                 and They were right. I needed
a shower to cleanse myself of everything

before the neighbors made a stink about my stench.

(originally published in SCAB Magazine, Summer 2020)

Eiffel 65

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

             blue house
          with a blue
               tall weed
        sunflower heart blue
    snake on the window
           board half in half out half
         void no sun no blue
                the sky fence
            hill inside blue
          not blue no
             blue is the fire
           smoke and eggplant eyes
              blue death in drawings
           a deep blue wind and water
        dirt on my face and hands
     cobweb and dust blue dream on blue
  is purple is blazing eyes in your skull
     is my skull same face different
              blue flat and bright light
           blue silk on blue bed

(originally published in Ginosko Literary Journal, 2021)

The Wedding Poem

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I was asked to write a poem
      to read at your wedding.
I have been writing for weeks.
I don’t know what I’m trying to do
      but I know it’s something new.
Mostly the poem has become my life.
Mostly it’s a poem of longing
      for what the poem in me longs for.
Mostly it is a poem of the fight between desire
      and desire.
Mostly it is a poem of desire
      from the poem’s point of view.
Maybe the poem is a poem of love.
Though like most loves, the poem is a little
      exasperated.
The poem seems at the moment
      to be in the middle of a struggle.
The poem says the poem is struggling.
The poem says it wants more
      than this.
The poem wants to try and try again.
The poem wants you
      to write a new poem for it.
It hopes it will then write a new
      vow.
I don’t know why I made myself
      the center of this.
I don’t know why I seem to be
      the only person in the poem.
How’s this: I said I was going
      to love you forever.
I believed it.
I believed in it.
I didn’t expect the word forever
to seem anachronistic.
What do you mean,
      forever?
Who told you
      the wedding poem is for you?
Who told you the wedding poem
      has to mean anything?
The wedding poem is a poem
      about the poetry we dream.
I see you on the stage.
You are on the stage with me.
You found a poem you loved
      and someone reads us its vows.
We try to see the future.
We try to see the poems we are
even though we might not know them.
We try to see the future.
I try to see the future.
We try to see a poem about to happen.
This is a poem about the dream.
I try to see a poem about to happen.
This is a poem about to happen.
It has become a poem for you.
It has become a poem for me.
This is a poem about the poem that isn’t
      yet.
I struggle to see a poem
      about to happen.
I struggle to see the poem about to happen.

(originally published in Academy of the Heart and Mind, Spring 2023)

Hog

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

there is no wrong way to eat
a hot dog there is no right
to eat a dog there is no hot
dog hot popsicle of pig
meat slathered in existential
ketchup bread-claustrophobic

                                                                    *

         once on a drive home from Central Catholic
         I stopped at the Dairy Queen Drive-Thru
                 and asked for hot dog wrapped in lettuce
                 I was more hypochondriac at sixteen
                 than at thirty-two anyway the kid
                 at the window said they couldn’t
                 but I insisted and the manager
                 smuggled the long sizzling dog in wet
                 lettuce I carry that shame in the trash
                 bag of my trunk to this day

                                                                    *

        pig meat
                       pig meat
                                       in a sleeping bag of green

                                                                    *

        there is no way to eat a dog
        there are ways to eat a hot dog
             I am a bog I am the bog I am
breakfast lunch dinner brunch midnight snack
  everlasting bun communion holy
water life I down through days and lick my fingers
after rough vigorous handwashing
               I’ve opened plastic package
               set skillet to flame
               lain logs on drizzled oil

                                                                    *

                       the celebrity chef in my mind
is me I documented cooking when I lived
in my car. That was my true potential. Oh, swine,
               you’re years beyond capable
yet I drove halfway across the country
to do what competitors do, which is down
hundreds of you. Joey Chestnut the undisputed
master after decades of dogs.

                                                                    *
                    Went to a dollar dog minor
                    league game twenty cents per dog flies
                    buzzing in orbit of condiments
                    five the limit at the window so all
                could see I had the buns. One each for
                     STRENGTH. ACCEPTANCE.
                        CONFIDENCE. GRACE.
                                   AMBITION.

                                                                    *

One inning was all
it took and I was alone in my new
                        city full of my father’s love
                        of baseball and barbecues. Now
                        there was an undisputed grill master.
                        Everyone knows one. I am not one.
                        There is no way to cook.
                        There is a way.
               Wayne was over and we flicked
               lit matches with our middle fingers
               from thumbs into ready
               charcoal to get the grill going.
We walked away and waited for
an action-movie explosion
but there was no ignition.

                                                                    *


                                                                                     My whole life I have been walking
                                                                                     away, not turning back to look.

(originally published in HAD, Summer 2022)

Plot

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

This all is a script about plotting.
An achingly slow clock. Poetry
makes me want to be outside.

Perhaps what is best is how
words move me to a surface,
but I remain in my Arctic superego.

What I mean is I am thinking
of what people will say
to me, to each other. A plot.

A whole movie inside my head.
I act in it, not knowing
what I’m doing.

(originally published in Avatar Review, Fall 2021)

Celestial Egg

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

                      “They’re not deviled eggs
                      because Lucifer was once an angel.”
                                              -Anth

At the bar you order
a small white plate
of celestial eggs.

Holy mayonnaise
yellow topped
with chives.

They are gulped
except for the last,
which you offer me

through telepathy.
I am the egg.
When I stop throbbing

is when I live
so I hold it high
in our five spotlights.

The arena cheers.
I see many doors.
Five floors:

on the bottom, death,
but each row above
a plethora of possibilities.

In your car, you say
I am feeling unmoored,
my shoe half-out your door.

The renaissance is what we
make. It is brown paint
over everything, the oil

light– you ask, what is on
your mind? I don’t know
how much you know

but I felt the warmth
of the machine beside me
thrumming on the street.

You were on the phone,
I think. I glared– I think
the end is coming

faster than fresh ideas
or the universe’s
rate of expansion.

The fact you drove
saved me from running
through the dark city

in the center of my existence.
In the shadow room
inside my house,

I did not process
emotion. The throbbing
sprain in my foot.

It was that death
issued a rain check
when I smacked my head

in the basement bar
of the indie theater.
I was the movie

everyone watched.
I left everyone waiting
for me to emerge

from the sewer. I swear
I will not group up next time.
I want each synapse

comprehended. To succeed
would be the stretchy fabric
of my living. Nylon

for the brain. Procrastination
for the ascent. I say you need
not worry because I am not

worried. Depression is a shovel
deep in soil and I am buried
in my mind, thankful

to be given a second
heaping of kindness
when I never deserved the first.

Hard to learn you
when my body is uniformly
jagged and growing

hairs sharp like knives
eternally out of every inch.
I want to be soft

with you, but once
we eat, all mysticism
is lost to process.

(originally published in Academy of the Heart and Mind, Spring 2023)