James Croal Jackson | 3 Poems

Intake

my heart is sore I want peppermint
ice cream to salve

sweetness
in all its delectable metaphors

if I gorge gorge gorge sugar milk I will a vat
nothing wrong with that

the heart is churning wheel
without a driver license

in Pennsylvania I have been
alone in the frozen aisle

running my fingers along
icy sediments on paperboard pints

in Ohio my childhood
couldn’t figure out the bats that lived in my bedroom

okay I couldn’t sleep
inside the blanket of my spinning

thoughts which had large muscles
and carried me into the spidery basement

which would haunt me with webs
descending from lights that had not been changed

since the 1980s and my parents
were fine with letting insects fester

I curled on the hard-knuckled couch
doing easy work to save the world

and then my game staying down
as long as time itself an endless

tunnel without the green man exit
signs indicating how far the feet


to travel before I get anywhere
out of danger and what

to run from anyway besides
reality

---

At Adee’s Coffee After the Writing Conference, I Overhear the Baltimorean Repeatedly Saying This Is Just to Say

which is not to say that he is
not a poet, only that a friend
of his wants her cat to love her.
She follows it around her house,
hoping it will emerge from under
the bed without darting down
stairs where she then follows
it to his new wooden nook
in the kitchen, which is just
to say this seems more feline
than human, which is just
to say perhaps I am
overhearing wrong.

Derek D. once said
you belong in every
space you inhabit.
There is a group
of writers
in the cafe behind
me. I keep twisting
my head back to look
for an opening– only
the flower murals red
and purple blooming
on the wall above them.
They have the white
and blue tote bags
we were given for attending.
And rolling luggage.
I wheeled my own
across the asphalt
in Fells Point, carrying
my own grief and need
to belong in the silence
I choose to commit
behind the window
with the view of
a leafless winter
oak branch sagging,
pushed down
by branches already
falling.

---

Production Office Promotion

stacks of boxes paper-
clip paradise

Rita Wilson
realizes

I am the one
who sends her

so many emails
strange when a celebrity

recognizes ME
from my nametag

I consolidate
the memory

not that I’m hot
off

the reel
half-understanding

the number of bananas
needed in crafty

I had to talk
with the PA

who arranges bagels
how do you

manage a friend
under vertebrae

roof
I can’t stop

thinking about
an authentic life

(thanks, Isabella,
on your apartment

hardwood,
reminiscing)

how I make
corrections

into the star-
lined carpet

the Serious Document
reads APPROVED

not UNAPPROVED
I wish you would

send Peter pink
script revisions

all in the spam
I communicate

K and A
however long

the days eleven
pizzas ordered tonight

we don’t eat we stay
forever in the arm

of a 3D-printed Milky Way
seeping starlight

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