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5 Poems by James Croal Jackson

Low-Visibility Night Drive Home


                 For Tarik Jackson


highway needles appear
fast white lines I bullet
along an aimless angle
fate a roll of die half my 
life I have had my license
tonight asphalt is slippery
and tenuous when I spend
too much time alone only
the hum of engine knowing
tires hiss more air the further
I go do not devalue yourself
the chanting mass says my 
head loud roiling in ninety-mile
-per-hour grief I did not know 
Tarik as well as those who knew
but I miss him should have
called in this ubiquitous darkness 
smoke leather peeling off my 
ten-year steering wheel a passing 
truck sprays my windshield
mist this sharp steady rain Reek 
drove a convertible he may have 
been drenched but he would 
have laughed made it seem okay 
if I knew his misery if I could 
see behind his laughter
mask the off-ramp winding
curve onto the final highway
home in his deep empathy
Reek drove this stretch of night 
after switching off his lights


Lonely


thoughts from
the bottle I want
everyone & everything


no one around loneliness
imprints into sand 
a hand desperate for a body


Sometimes I Float Through Suburbs

in my car
dead
white sunlight 
shines off the shield
window waterstains
obscure the world gray
not flicking 
the turn signal
left 
or right won’t matter
a crash to a ghost
is whiplash


Columbus Crew SC


You said you’d be here hours ago,
weeks ago, months ago– last year, 
we were late to the Crew game 
then screamed nonsense to the crowd.
And then you told me you’d be back
and I waited, tethered to pole, while
the game ended and you were nowhere.
The bottles of mixed vodka we hid inside 
the base of a lamppost was, miraculously,
still there at the end. But I changed 
cities then came back to the light
shattered in the breath of a rubber band
slung outward toward infinity, the dash
of time not slowing any past collisions.


Catcall / Catastrophe


So you made a carrot soufflé–
no one cares about the mush


orange and earthy you made 
in the oven. That shit is under


control. Look instead at Joshua 
trees burning down the desert 


runway. That’s a catwalk. A 
catcall to the Earth from 


your rolled-down pickup
truck window. See


how hot they are? It’s 
like those cruel videos


where the cat’s caretaker
places a cucumber


behind the off-guard animal,
and people laugh 


as the creature flees in 
surprise terror. 


These videos were big 
for a summer. This


slideshow of tiny
cruelties– it’s harder


to find new spaces
to hide.




James Croal Jackson (he/him) is a Filipino-American poet who works in film production. He has two chapbooks, Our Past Leaves (Kelsay Books, 2021) and The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights Press, 2017). He edits The Mantle Poetry from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.(jamescroaljackson.com)
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