weird

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)

White Noise Eucharist

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

the bathroom fan. now I am asleep. no
god has been asleep as long as I remember.

there was sleeping in church my pew
a long loungechair. white women

singing sunflower and epistle. to
write a love letter these days means

you are able to buy bread. too many
starved. hearts empty tanks. fill

a cup with holy water. pour into
brown grass. I have never been a man

of faith. I open plastic packets without
looking. I consume what’s inside.

(originally published in Poetry Super Highway, Summer 2022)

Grade School Cafeteria

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

The cafeteria was too
massive yet still the size
confined. Don’t want to talk lunch
meat. Or Drew at the table, harping.
He is inconsequential so why do I
mention him, twenty-some years
after? The bullies are the ones
who stay. I got smacked in the head
by a basketball there. The only fair
fight’s a food fight. Today, he’s
famous. He doesn’t know I have
this story to tell. I
drifted in and out of consciousness
for a week after. I floated
in the river, involuntarily.
That version of me drowned.
I never saw him again.

(originally published in The Scop Magazine, 2023)

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)

Foreheads

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Clink your skull against my skull.
Tulip glasses in the fog at a winery.
The pale white of a wedding dress–
you wouldn’t call me Western,
would you? I’m warm at the brain
center. Leave your soft red mark
on my red mark so we can walk
slowly in the grass toward the fence
that keeps a single deciduous tree
beside the blue barn where chickens
are kept against their wild wills.

(originally published in impspired, Fall 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)

There’s not enough insect imagery

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

in my poetry where are the bugs where
are the bugs hiding everywhere cock
roaches lurk beneath heaps of clothes
on the white bathroom tiles I turn on
the faucet and divine water sprays
from the shower head please scrub
the itching away the dermis micro
cosmic atoms creeping along the
ridges of my bodyhairs I know
behind the curtains what’s inside
the peels of avocados and apples
dead wing meat flecks my tongue
will lash at colonies in the cracks
of my kitchen poison in the paint
on walls to drop the husks into
the milk of my daily routine
in and out of bed the wind
a centipede its many legs
sing bristles on my skin

(originally published in Madness Muse Press, Fall 2020)