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James Croal Jackson
Spring 2016 * To Emily (From Angel) To run away would prove the wild still within me, taming that short fence with my claws to catapult into the trees where birds and squirrels and spiders sleep alone. I look starward when you lure me out among the sparrows. I am no monster who lurks in twilight, but sometimes exist memories I never made, when cool air rushes into me through the window screen like the moon commanding the tide– I am not fully water but, like you, an animal embedded with her feral past– my sisters teach me to hunt, mice dangling from their mouths that haunt afternoon naps on your heavy bed– my beautiful sisters never knowing how it feels to be a princess, gold and pink tiaras glistening between their royal ears. I would not belong in those sprawling forests from my dreams. The hunger from the wild’s lack of you would tremble my true heart home under starlight’s navigation– to here, where my whiskers graze your calves, where I am cradled in your arms in the company of heartbeat: a sweetness, a tenderness the feral could never dream of. * |
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Two-year Lovesong
the castle moat floats between imagination and fantasy holds to the gabardine moon just a flick of the lighter away the first time you experience sunshine after birth first kiss with the music swaying both of us two mouths full of stars and wakeful sleep where memory lives and the tide comes and goes feet in and out of water gate lowered to oblivion your held hand in high regard a balled rain if you can hold without dissipating you are the master of clouds a red ladder to the top of Mount Everest where you will never rest on cozy mattresses victory holding loose the lips of passion and allowing you roam free * |
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Lance's Lament
as we gathered to mourn the puppy struck by a car outside of the bank, i was reminded of glue: how it encrusts fingers; if it could seep through skin it would sleep in your lungs & heart & hasten the path to the common rest they couldn't have fastened the coffin with glue– too cruel, they said– if your hand could even summon the will to move a square, red magnet fastens your snow origami valentines forever to green construction paper, tiny prayers bottled i hope there is another side, even when i open the door for orange juice, cool breath of air within, glass, it breathes, infested with my own fingerprints, tartness prior to the swallow & acceptance– for as long as i am, you are, too * |
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James Croal Jackson’s poetry has appeared in The Bitter Oleander, Rust+Moth, Glassworks, and other publications. He grew up in Akron, Ohio, spent a few years in Los Angeles, traveled the country in his Ford Fiesta, and now lives in Columbus, Ohio. Find more at jimjakk.com.
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