How We Talk About Settling
Wet from the mansion still
writhing beneath us. Red
gold halls and long tongue
-like carpets. I could not
say what I wanted to say
except get me out of here.
But we were young, yesterday,
sipping free whiskey
in the aftermath of
condolences. Burnt
our throats going
down.
The Similarities
between you both are more Picasso
Pollack than Leibovitz however
much I disengage the Oculus will never
be Pennsylvania though I have advanced
technology in my pocket (I still have
the broken faces we captured) I seek
the thin thread between real what
I wish to be real where I want to go
if time ever bends into black hole
I’ll head back home to Ohio and give
a hug to everyone I somehow love
as an alarm or Chekhov’s gun
telling you are the people I still love
in the future you will reassemble into
magazine collage and still resemble
the hummus-stained server in 2012
Office (August)
is this how you spend your days? laundry
filthy as furniture.
the room cold between two
worlds. I am awash in
transition: upbringing /
nirvana
give me a place to call home
I am stuck in the wedge
of
wanting nothing
but your long arms around
the circumference of
my body. here is
the ticking clock
a timepiece
countenance
allowing sea change
along the equator
indecision
east of my brain sees desire in
a sleeping blanket. I am trying
to wrap my mind around
the absence
of the life it
leaves.
James Croal Jackson (he/him) has a chapbook, The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights Press, 2017), and poems in Pacifica, Reservoir, and Rattle. He edits The Mantle (themantlepoetry.com). Currently, he works in the film industry in Pittsburgh, PA. (jimjakk.com)
Bindweed Magazine 