Wine

Bottle

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

corkscrew splits when prying loose
coppola‘s aged cabernet sauvignon

you once opened a bottle in a hotel
with a flatiron i bring down a steamer

the bottle perspires with no release my cat
nearly walks into the heat i’m thankful you are

present my spine so soft can’t keep anyone
safe best not dwell my memories

are triglycerides clinging the tender
parts of brain we go downhill to rite-aid

we’re told it’s barren look elsewhere
a beer store closing the clerk in desperate

gasp seeks three screws he can use
to make a tool makeshift but alas

the shoe method works he says take
your boot pound with force try

as we might against my home’s brick no
way to get how we feel into the open

(originally published in RUNDELANIA, Fall 2024)

Video Games on New Year’s Day

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

grape stem the fruit centipede

          parched time

                    a skin between my teeth

fingernails tapping on blue porcelain bowl

          then the controller my hand’s touched everything in this place

thanks for your spider fingers on the soft of my chest

          lips purple with last night’s wine

                   new year burst with pessimism not

optimism beginnings are overrated

          I do best when I don’t know where I’m going

(originally published in A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Winter 2023)

Chain

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Cramped in that silver
nook by the kitchen

was how not to know me.
The panini-maker pressed

pitas onto various vegetables
that were consumed and

capitalized. Chickpeas
churning in the high-

grade processor (with
special red spice).

Carrots in the juicer,
bananas in the blender,

hearts on dark trays headed
to tables by the window

overlooking the snow-
plowed parking lot. I dropped

wine glasses all week
and would you agree

it was too much when
the army came in

to sweep glass
off the floor?

(originally published in Stick Figure Poetry Quarterly, Spring 2023)

Another Drunken Summer

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Last summer, clunks of glass,
grapefruit juice across the veiled
table. We stayed drunk

through sweltering June, to cool
off with Bella Sera pinot grigio,
Tostitos, queso. How much is

too much pleasure? These half-
empty days of water we are
not eager to drink. Sit in shade

til sundown, table umbrella up
to block the cancer sun we
know. We know.

(originally published in Kissing Dynamite, Spring 2018)

Dean’s Birthday

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

Sometimes a Saturday is candle wax
the length from Cleveland to Columbus, a highway
of years burning blue in early spring, a handful

of flowers you hand an old friend who seems
a little aged now: a new house, a long mortgage,
a luxury car and me, unemployed,

eating pizza and fries.
He drinks red wine (party
hard weekend) –

these blood-drinks of youth.
I buy him nothing
he gives me space in return.

 

(originally published in The Heartland Review, Fall 2018)

Short Return to LA

/ James Croal Jackson / Leave a comment

With every step, the air parted
and spoke your name.
Smog and all, would you forget

the jagged alleys where
we fermented, became wine?
Its knife cut ribbons, red

repelling the pressure of four A.M breathing.
Driving home from San Francisco down the coast,
each Joshua tree prayed

to a vastness greater than the desert.
The long, Pacific vistas became the sheen
of old Mustangs caught beneath shadows

of Wilshire’s vacant towers.
Our heels kicked dust
and browned the sky–

ever were the hours sand
on the beach, infinite and pearling
a microscopic glint…

the ocean still haunts–
its salt so embedded
in our skin.

 

(originally published in Rust+Moth, Spring 2016)