USA

A Poetry of Place

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Because Tony once said he knew
Columbus and Los Angeles the way I do–
I have not yet developed a poetry of
place for Pittsburgh. Three years in and
still the surprise hills, the way I always
feel– still– an outsider wending my way
through confusing streets. I’ve worked with
Kailee’s dad longer than I lived with Paige
and still we haven’t had a deep conversation.
Everywhere I go there remains a sense of some
thing deep that needs explored. The way
I walked Los Angeles streets at night–
the endless sprawl– must be the same,
but Pittsburgh’s smaller, the graffiti
more familiar, how it’s all a sketch of home.

(originally published in Vilas Avenue, Winter 2023)

Anytown, USA

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

this country music’s gunshots slinging through the wind wrapped around Anytown, USA
where I’ve never been anywhere outside my own mind traveled everywhere within this bag of
skin and blood bound to family I become further and further away from each day I bleed out my
own legacy owned by money by the river by the body bags I see everywhere I see a witness

(originally published in Moss Trill, Winter 2022)

I have been having nightmares of a police state,

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

of walking down the street at night, red
and blue sirens wailing past, and people
being shot in front of me, their bodies
dragged across the sidewalk
out of view.

Maybe because I’ve binged
The Handmaid’s Tale
or work too much (stress
the swan song we stay singing).

Whatever the cause,
I live
in America, America,
America.

(originally published in Good Cop / Bad Cop: An Anthology (FlowerSong Press), Summer 2021)

After the Election, 2020

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

it’s OVER

whelming

darkness

the creeping red
into the garden. the blossom
     I align with the ocean
in its magnitude of idealism

I align with my self-
deprecating friends
my honest to
whatever god makes
them actually brings
them happiness I want
to live a little less
for my own interests
if I can help
you bring yourself
to light instead I
think you can call
the results
a little more
often, the god
of who we want
to be, the presidents
we are

(originally published in The Los Angeles Review of Los Angeles, Summer 2022)

Shots

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

At the bar, I ask if you want shots.
You say, no– 2X, so I ask is that Dos
Equis? We laugh, then you tell me

2X is an IPA from Southern Tier.
When I order PBR you fire back
I don’t do that shit anymore.

At our table you lean into me,
staring at the red, paint-splattered wall.
You say I went to school with someone

who was killed in the shooting last
weekend. I think– there were two–
then ask if you’re okay. You

cock your hand on my thigh
and lift your bottle to toast me–
our clink of drinks a cold hard

cheers to the body of a rifle.
The skin through the holes
in our ripped jeans is heavy

against each other. You whisper in my ear
the world has too many people.
You shoot to the opposite

side of the table and ask,
how many people have you had sex with
who are dead? I say none that I know of.

And knowing you want me
to ask you, too, I mouth,
you?

Your smile loads a magazine,
amber bullets in your eyes–
you flash me the peace sign.

(originally published in Red Eft Review, Summer 2020)

2017 Mantra

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Build bridges, not walls,
though bridges ice faster
than roads we traveled–
hundreds of miles,
only to boomerang back
to before, while thousands of
armed windmills gasp for air–

the sunset through the bug-
stained window moves faster
than us toward a semblance of home–
swirls of clouds quivering
into the arms of weeping
willows simply
weeping–

 

(originally published in The Wayward Sword, Summer 2018)