Poetry: James Croal Jackson

* Author of the Month *

James Croal Jackson

Facebook Dating

Don’t you want to date everyone you’ve ever known?

Here’s a way:

I’ve got a secret

admirer. So do you

& you & you & you you you you you you you.

Your heart is an information superhighway

                               you’ve followed

                                to the Pacific, at least,

                                  & swam & swam & swam

                                       to be lost in blue

                                       endless scrolling

                                       you like & wow &

                                                                     love.

***

Ill Pizzicato

Too tired to play a love song–

the strings on this violin must be sick.

Pizzicato, pizzicato. Pestering

the soundscape. Some days are for sitting

in bed arguing– the toilet flushes.

Your roommate must be sick

of us on the verge of breaking up and

throwing too much of ourselves against

the wall. The bang-bang-bling to distract

ourselves– we contract ourselves to another

week, at least. Then the same: four

bland walls and our muted voices

pestering the soundscape of

what we used to call Paradise.

***

West

nights of cats following cliché heartbreak

both of us single lonely ditched by friends

we smoked weed in your empty pizza

box apartment of turquoise walls I threw

myself into the cats were fighting over

string and I asked how often must we

wake up not in love you said we have

been recently while our phones lit  

our faces grim in the dark of tangled

connection I wanted you to come

to Cali with me and we went west

but you stayed in Colorado to smoke

the mountains high and higher clouds

unreachable

***

Tootsie Rolls

my body was destroyed

to confuse the witness

red feathers fell

in dust and dirt

I am not compatible with the moon

I kiss my mouth

diabetes has become a tooth

return to the deep pit

black in its whole

***

Excited for Something (After Depression)

must be the upcoming road

trip to Portland, to return

briskly in love with

someone

I haven’t seen

in years

and work on my state

in

her living room

where lamps float

sails on a lake room

***

Passed

Crushing cans in the

attic was how to subdue

days– guitar distortion

summers, apple rum

autumns. Red leaves

hued the music–

e-minor when the

wind chilled, ice

of songbirds the

loneliest way

to tell time.

***

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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 Pacifica. He edits The Mantle Poetry (themantlepoetry.com) and works in film production in Pittsburgh, PA. (jamescroaljackson.com)

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Setu, August 2020