Summertime

Five-Star Hotel

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Starlight is not equal in the petroleum sky.
Homes know the ocean
but not their owners– cliff’s edge.

Striated fireworks stake and fall,
hurriedly carted by fragile marbles.

Oil salts the earth to lust–
a red akin to blood
and romance seen in films,
romanticism violently envisioned
and burrowed for the claw
of the excavator, millionaire muck
gushed from leaking faucets.
The piping is consistent:
the toilets flush twice– to be sure.

These are where the fingerprints mingle
to create their own pulse– voyeur beats.

So fill your tank with Grey Goose.
Drink Utopia first. There is no price
for luxury but the cost in lost days–
my treat.

 

(originally published in altered form in Little River – Issue #4)

Egyptian Ratscrew

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Waiting for a spade, or any jack, really.
The pool is deep in the shallow end.
Waxy chlorine splashes your baby oil eyes.
The sun lies between the tanlines on our skin
which make us ever chameleons. Not that we shift,
but we eat where we are wanted.
I give you the iPod touch with the black fungus.
You twirl your index finger.
Then we leave. The window cranks open.

 

(originally published in Little River – Issue 4)

Because I Never Listened to Your Stories

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Thirty-five years and fingernails
darken, blacken from walnuts
and the cracks of hammers, the coming
of dawn, clouds wrapped in thunder–

the fruiting spire, the pear-toned
light, the front lawn fire, charcoal
grass, green peels ripening– ripe–
soft–

red Helix stagnant, lonesome, remembering
the wet-leather thunderstorm days
cruisin’ seventy,
the human box of organs and history
holding rubber handles
treaded like hieroglyphics–

interpret me. Listen.

These are the words on the bathroom stall
fingernail-scratched and ignored

What Will You Remember?

Not the stories told in tones softer than television

 

(originally published in NEAT., Issue 7)