James Croal Jackson

Spring, 2020

James Croal Jackson

Spring’s to bring the beacon. This year, just pollen after dead leaves.

(Crust of another burnt baking pan). Look how inside you are.

Time rolls down the verdant hills we left behind.

The empty storefronts– now the scene of a tripod positioned to catch a dance

party of one. Backdrop of dark, grimy windows. Still, the sky stays blue.

No molecule of spikes replicating itself endlessly above. Just the days.

All the days become the one before – a billion more.

Entropy at Highland Square

James Croal Jackson

Each time I come home a little something erodes, a smooth stone rubbed against cement for a few hours. Walking into Zub’s, into Ray’s– used to be the crowd could be religious for me. A thunderspark, my ego self-distributed communion. Yes, I want a sea of friends to greet me when I go home, forever the place I must be magnetized to, being the treadmill I ran up to a certain age. I aged better than I thought, but I aged, I. aged, T. aged, T. aged, A. aged, M. aged, R. aged, W. aged– and live in other cities now. The jobs and kids, the wanting them– I acknowledge the finally shifting tectonics beneath my feet I so long denied. I stand at an empty table with everything extinct, drinking Christmas Ale in the light of flickering football fields. I play 20 Questions with myself imagining what my friends might ask me. Am I alive? A mineral? Furniture? Ovate, made of fur, smaller than a bread box? Am I a utility? Can I eat myself?

Do you call when it’s not convenient? When you are not around? When?

Are you an animal? Malleable? Leather? A vegetable?

Are you something a bird might wear? A feather, weightless as the wind?

Cleaning a Room Is a Tornado of Cords

James Croal Jackson

right now our animal sits on a paper leaf bells in the other room and a TV remote’s button-presses amplified thousandfold sometimes heartbeats in the walls tell me: is that faucet water or white noise machine plastic bags on plastic bags on you bring me a handful of the cat’s toenails in your palm

Two Days Before Final Fantasy VII Remake, Bernie Ends His Campaign

James Croal Jackson

to play a game is to simply look into a void I need to limit the amount my eyes (or else the world’s but a buttercream) I dream I dream in pixels nostalgia of many Midgars transformed in what to partake but all these riches of revolution memory is a waterfall rushing headfirst cold into pointy rocks I wanted to forget this good game with you knowing neither of us could afford the new

Clearing My Throat Before the Water

James Croal Jackson

These sheets are itchy–black silver Christmas present from my partner’s parents.

This time of year is drymouth season. The absence of horseflies–still my skin wells up with red, clay for a malleable waking.

Shut my eyes– I never want to see the dying sun.

James Croal Jackson (he/him/his) is a Filipino-American poet. He has a chapbook, The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights Press, 2017), and recent poems in DASH, Sampsonia Way, and Jam & Sand. He edits The Mantle Poetry (themantlepoetry.com). Currently, he works in film production in Pittsburgh, PA. (jamescroaljackson.com)