Three Poems

by James Croal Jackson

Erosion

I want to sketch surroundings
in my skull they are skeletons
each day dustwhite percussion
bleating purple ears forgetting
shapes faces family landscape
manicured blood lawn of bone
dry cocktails to leash legacy
within brick pen of a home
we call distance inside air
conditioned repainted longing
to be where you are inside
contruction green architects
will lose the blueprint to

When you say exclusive do you mean we are alive alongside the only other life in the universe or

do you mean something else
because right now I am committed
to the rare magic of water its myriad

forms    fresh    salt     rain     ice
but don’t you go change too
much on me I feel so small

in the emptiness following days
without you     being in the pull
of your invisible gravity what

a dance to be so meaningless
years away from all other heat and
made of fragile things     carbon    dust

yet when I fart and sneeze through
the night I still have my body
and you intact in morning light

There Was Good Reason to Break Up Last Year

maybe it
was the last good year
of living

the shadows
over the world
half-draped

smoke
in our hearts
not yet noxious in

the air then we knew
a future
was alive

but isn’t it always
the last love the only
one still possible

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 Poetry (themantlepoetry.com). Currently, he works in the film industry in Pittsburgh, PA. (jimjakk.com)