trombone

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)

Band Room

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

there are many instruments that we are
and many more we are not

such as we are sometimes saxophones
who have not memorized love songs

but we have eyes to read the sheets
lips to blow into trumpets tubas

muscles to crash cymbals
pound the bass drum at night

we remain off-tune no matter time of day
arcs of trombone waves flute trills rainbows

the inhaled swampy atmosphere
of slide-lube and falling domino fingers

down the rigid clarinet air
melodic staccatos of sixteenth-notes

every piece celestas
on wet reed floor

the band room holds its breath
waits for us to play something

 

(originally published in Beech Street Review, Fall 2016)