JAMES CROAL JACKSON - POEMS

James Croal Jackson (he/him) has a chapbook, The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights Press, 2017), and poems in Pacifica, Reservoir, and indefinite space. He edits The Mantle (themantlepoetry.com). Currently, he works in the film industry in Pittsburgh, PA. (jimjakk.com)    

Giant Portrait
​

If I had the cash to install
a giant portrait of myself
I wouldn’t want it 
looking back at me either. 
Keep my eyes 
on those bluebirds up 
and away! 
My gaze 
judging me perpetually
in the living room,
the present me
already judging.
I guess early on
I would get used to it.
Walk past the portrait
without registering
a thought. And one day 
snap out from a daze staring
as the self stares away,
and then the next 
in the morning’s 
mirror– cracked, 
smeared with 
fingerprints
and dust. 

​

Writer
​

out of my pocket 
a little
lighter

​

Lorde
​

I’m sinking all this soft 
serve thinking about you. Love, 
15-0. I’m the zero without a racket

causing a racket to my friends about 
the heart’s catalogue of sounds 
under a stethoscope– your x-ray

shadow of spring when beach 
living was what we aspired to before 
I was hired at an office I say sucks 

my days away feeding off bone 
marrow called cured turkey
the sandwiches we would make.

I have slid so far down the skinny
memory rabbit hole to replicate
burnt CDs to blast from open

Fords that sputtered through city
streets in joyrides we thought
would last forever.


​

​Medicated Anticipation

you said wait a few years 
you’d move to California
by then already gone

an ill-timed applause
two hands in magnetic
motion missing

like sipping fluid through 
an allergic throat closing
such lean times 

the tangerine sun 
sleeps til noon 

didn’t your dad write 
a book on the art of joy? 
because it is an art 

a painting with overused 
blues these uppers I knew 
gleaming in the froth 

of your mouth



​

Engagement
​

I am not crying   You are

Ok   it is I    crying

on the phone with you
out from hungover car
in Columbus Ohio

loud   enough
to traverse     sonic field
flats     green

and potholed concrete
across state line
to Indianapolis Indiana

I am not screaming  Ok it is I

screaming   You
walk   a cell phone tower
tightrope listening   repeating

    It is ok to cry

Some things I cannot
deny    This hungover
day sags into night

GPS off     driving loops 
around the block     
memories the silver ring

around another’s finger

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