Tag Archives: James Croal Jackson

Poems are my flecks of skin I want people to take home After a reading last year Jordan told me he likes my poems but they are only skin cells So Jordan wants my blood wants to syringe my heart … Continue reading →

                                    – sign posted by the African Tree Grape                                     at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical                                     Gardens in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania meaning I love you I love you or I did it’s not dead I swear in my heart there’s our little room full … Continue reading →

Dark and spacious carriage – architecture splits before me, chunks of wood floating in green pond. Summertime was a memory I ate like strawberries behind the wheel. Sticky khaki shorts and burnt-out suns encapsulate the void closing in: a blood … Continue reading →

One day I’ll have to leave your house & venture into blizzard– love, we found each other frozen in a field of withered stalks & each embrace since has used up precious warmth. We warm ourselves & hold on tight … Continue reading →

Palm to neck – tactile hypocrisy. My Adam’s apple, weren’t my lips once sweet for Jesus? Crucifixion was puberty lapping holy water in adulthood’s church, blessed be hope. To remake myself is a perpetual game of jacks and marbles rolled … Continue reading →

I was searching, too, having lost the will to film when I left Los Angeles. So when you and Billy hid bags of Haddad’s M&Ms from the other, I learned it’s okay and rare to find such sweetness inside the … Continue reading →

Since I first saw your face shine from a stage and again in desert sun and through cool, desert night, you always felt right. We are soaked now in swimming pools and sands pooled near the coastline’s swaying smile that … Continue reading →

Your wristwatch ticks slower than mine. Time does not account for the beating of two hearts on opposite coasts. Know we pass through days the same: second by second, minute, hour, moon—every second, every minute I fill myself with your … Continue reading →

I used to find joy in little things. Like luck on the head of a penny. Or a tire chained to a blue wall in the subway. Or two bullets, no gun. Or your glance on long drives beside the … Continue reading →

We were children foretold to save the world. We made love in alleys hidden from the moon. We calculated the trajectory of movement, fleeing into battle rooms of weightlessness inundated with that floating feeling of our necessary covalence. In our … Continue reading →

The only deals I found in Vons were in clearance. Beers half-off per bottle. They’ll be ready in a box in my too-orange, too-granite Public Storage space when I am. Bearded teens saunter by in lumberjack caps. I will wait … Continue reading →

The longer potatoes taste air, the more they rust over time. We strummed guitars with calloused fingertips (melodious incision). The pot overfills from the weight of boiling. We whistled unfamiliar tunes through afternoon orgasms. My teeth cannot chew the raw. … Continue reading →

Neither of us know signs to look for when the other talks to another. Glances become knives. We fling blades onto caution signs which clang then lie dull until the sharp of morning. James Croal Jackson’s poems have appeared in … Continue reading →

I am full of vacancy and noise and technically six glasses of water before bedtime. Much can be said about wanting to purify yourself. I dipped myself in water again last week. I’m telling you it works: you mash two … Continue reading →

Cold fronts enter spring, but cardinals sing their frigid songs despite soft snow. Red lips still curl over the sidewalk’s cigarettes but warmth dissipates when smoke leaves the body. Pale hands reach from corners of blurry photographs— push through crowds … Continue reading →

We reach for jagged rocks, the twist and slide of fingers: morning rose in silk. The cold sheets cling to warmth and disassociate—that’s when the open window invites the low static of engines, white noise of chirps. Our eyes thrush … Continue reading →

sandals stomp over scattered skittles & seagulls encircle us the gathered tides implore us to pick a color within these waves reflecting a million skies parachutes will glide us downward to the sand and blue rises so slow we never … Continue reading →

Someday you will like the way you look. You are a mirror unbound to reflection but you are present in raindrops, and puddles learn to love their craters. James Croal Jackson’s poems have appeared in magazines including The Bitter Oleander, … Continue reading →

dishes are an exercise in repetition why do we go through our days so quickly we must be unhappy with material possessions more specifically how we sustain ourselves I am amazed I have sustained myself for so long teenage years … Continue reading →

The only good thing in this city is my 1968 Coupe – long, slick, olive green. Brakes, good. Tires – fair. I may have worn the rubber too quickly the way I sped through red lights after you said Jesus … Continue reading →

We inhaled fog on the Golden Gate along with traffic exhaust. Foghorns cried names we did not recognize. Car horns, names we gave ourselves. From this high, you said, there is no good way to fall. We scrunched our fingers … Continue reading →

bone-worn dog & hung head asked high kids holding lemons, tangy hair in the air, zest & bitter tantalus– went to dumpster-cat (blackberry feet) sick of white gloves, guttural mews. coarse throat, bumpy pink tongue trickled yesterday’s juices, held the … Continue reading →

drilling holes in the white wall to repair the rest of the world workshirts feed clocks’ hands ticking forever circular splash of rosewood paint wound of silence spent the loud city will not silence me James Croal Jackson lives for … Continue reading →

because I repeatedly disregard that which is shaped like a diamond to be a diamond, I will flirt with the skateboard girl who zooms away & lament our love, lost as yesterday’s blackened ganja. living on the beach, scraping sand … Continue reading →