trip

Firenze

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

     open shutters overlook
   bells    umbrellas      energy
I    watch all day I am
  one pedestrian watch
              as        clock hands reach
slowly       one way                  up
to us which direction              walk
the bridge over the river
time the cobblestone path that
firms as marks hands gaff tape
on what slips                     this
plane this coil           weeks
     wanting not just this country
to last forever but what seeds
of doubt to be taken by wind
            stolen          by gnats
who sneak and fly into our space
if they could               digest what
we     put down plans to live
here in two years that cannot
come too fast it will arrive
a bullet         train when we are
sleeping on a humid night
in the                    future
                                        our
traveler bags                   brown
    and green     means
the forest meaning         opposite
of          open road if time
were this ambiguous than
I want nothing to do with it
but its hands are in everything
     bugs in the unfinished chianti
     drown        and            nothing
I can do to help
and I don’t want to
      drink   but I do

(originally published in The Round, Spring 2025)

A Soft Fog

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Don’t freak out– it’s just fog–
soft as breath on your neck–

it is us, trying to salvage
this mess. A flower wilting

in morning, a scream, no rain,
a meadow in Maine where

we buried our secrets.
We don’t know shit about right

or wrong. About how deep
the wound goes. Only that the fog

is us: our spit, our blood, our love.
We fog up the windows, the mirrors,

the sky. We’re making Maine our own.

(originally published in Pandemonium Journal, Summer 2024)

#1

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

When I say you are my number
one I mean in the line of infinity:

crystals in sand, the observable
universe, atoms in the pretzel of

our hands– we were in the back-
seat. You were in the middle

of a knot, trying to emerge
beyond the physics that

has no name to call us.

(originally published in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Spring 2023)

DMT & LSD

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

when I see you next I want to ask you about the drugs
if you still do them because I still regret turning down
DMT you offered at 4 AM when I was on the ground
floor of your apartment sitting on black catfur carpet

though it sounds like quite the quick trip eight minutes
of being in an alternate universe how so many stories
about the drug involve tiny green creatures milling
about & that alone drives the conspiracy theorist out

although for a time I partook often in LSD & once
when in the shower high I could feel the alternate
lifeform in my spine black-and-white pulses being
cleansed inside me & then I wrote a wobbly novella

& there’s a doctor I know who microdoses on the
daily & I’ve made a new friend who says she wants
to trip with me & I cannot wait to have another such
experience even eight years older than the last trip

last time I saw you a couple years ago you had just
graduated from art school making mad money at a
crazybusy restaurant in the bustling brewery district
of my city but I was making amends with a friend

thus I didn’t ask about psychedelics though the thought
crossed my mind after & then I wonder does the boarding
pass for mindtrips expire what if I ask & you answer
the captain is dead the plane no longer leaves the ground

 

(originally published in The Broken City, Winter 2019)

Scenery

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

My roommate takes me
for a walk, or she takes the dog
for a walk. It doesn’t matter.
It’s the second night

we’ve walked each other,
or the dog walked us,
sore throat, brainy fog,
and this time can’t even find

the moon, obscured by houses.
We look anyway, together,
comparing bloom to doubt,
how one is sure, the other

grows, and leaves
crunch beneath as the dog
stops our walking
to pee, to leave another

thing behind. On Sunday
I watched the Niagara dump millions
of gallons into itself, mist rising
into something, nothing. The moon

loomed huge over the bridge
to America towing sunset’s lavender
bed but you can watch a thing die
before your eyes, or not at all–

the way, driving back from Canada
in heavy traffic, I tapped you
on the shoulder on the sky bridge
and said, look, here’s something,

one thing beautiful left, look,
and took the world’s last magnificent,
proffered blue and there, as a passenger,
you refused.

 

(originally published in The Knicknackery, 2018)

East Through California

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

I argue with the music in my car again
those rock’n’roll pots and pans clanging
in the soup kitchen of my imagination
the Steel Reserve of my rumba rumblin’
stomach unfilled from Maruchan ramen

really I’m running from anything but home:
in the apartment of my car the desert’s
a sandstorm of faulty A/C and mountains
obscuring the view of my future and
there’s nowhere else to go but here

 

(originally published in Outcast Poetry, Spring 2017)

After Palm Springs

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

We spent the entirety
of our days together.

Now, the vacation from myself
is over.

There is a void beside me
unexplainable in the absence
of presence.

No one here will keep me
whole. Digging into darkness,
film, facebook, what’s real, what’s imagined,
why does it matter?

I want to caress your stomach in the sun
and know everything is okay.

 

(originally published in #thesideshow, Spring 2017)