Poetry: Selections from James Croal Jackson

Another Round for Entropy

Soil shifts into sand. I sift through

the memory desert but images fade.

Apropos of data, imperfect as the sun.

Ever sit in existential crisis wondering

what if gravity ended? Would we

even know? A brisk death, clean,

and the photo album would

consist of something, a void

we wouldn’t be drawn to.

Take It Easy

the plan Sunday was take it easy

1 drink at the new brewery

 

instead we ran into 2 friends

then drank in the sunlight

among dogs on the patio

 

we walked five miles

through a cemetery

through the city

to another brewery

 

got drunk

on automated ordering

tech for our fast times

 

we packed Spider-Man 2 cards

we thought we would play

 

instead we drank with 2 friends

in 90 degree heat

taking it easy

Rainwater Is Now Undrinkable

everywhere around the world.

I learn this at work, a television

production office. A film would

frack lands surrounding its sets

were it to save a few hundred

bucks– you thought I’d say lives?

What powers that be? We’re alive,

yes, already pulsing red rivers

breached with microplastics.

The jingling adds up in my veins.

When I read forever chemicals,

I want it to mean love

but it is in the way we will

suffer together, forever,

oil rigs raised, still, all

over, hands up in ugly prayer.

The burning questions I want

to ask I can’t even stand

outside in a storm and be satiated.

Video Games on New Year’s Day

grape stem the fruit centipede

 

         parched time

 

                 a skin between my teeth

 

fingernails tapping on blue porcelain bowl

 

        then the controller my hand’s touched everything in this place

 

thanks for your spider fingers on the soft of my chest

 

        lips purple with last night’s wine

               

                 new year burst with pessimism not

 

optimism beginnings are overrated

 

         I do best when I don’t know where I’m going

An Ontological Argument for Necessary Being

God, understood here as a necessary being,

exists in my filthy shoe. The impossibility

of nonexistence shows good weather is

vague. Sunshine during workdays, storms on

weekends makes me want a world of reverse

gravity. My filthy shoes, then, muck

the clean white clouds of heaven.

James Croal Jackson is a Filipino-American poet who works in film production. He has three chapbooks: Count Seeds With Me (Ethel Zine & Micro-Press, 2022), Our Past Leaves (Kelsay Books, 2021), and The Frayed Edge of Memory(Writing Knights, 2017). He edits The Mantle Poetry out of Pittsburgh, PA.