twelve-hour daze

you work like you owe
something to the clock
the boss the bills

you sleep through alarm
and leave a kiss on her cheek
a post-it note

you drive home in the dark
the sun already gone like a lover
who left you for someone else

houses on the side
of the road cardboard cutouts
of a life you don’t have

you park behind her car
she sleeps in a bed
too big too cold too late

Driveway

You say depression
revs its engine when

leaves change. It’s easy
to hear outside your door.

Mine means walking
the same driveway every

day until colours fade,
then looking down

to find them
in a hole.

A Heron Jesus

I could be walking
on water down

the beach minding
my own business

a heron Jesus
and still at the splash

of your all
encompassing wingspan

I would not know
the difference

between a wave
and awash

The Not-Quite Blankness

I’m desperate to feel something
even as I see nothing in this moment but
the buzz & chatter of the city & the wind
as it crawls up my spine like a coyote
nosing into a garbage can. The poem
does not read like memory.

Jesse and Andrew

were two good friends in Los Angeles,
and in last night’s dream, Andrew announces
he quit acting, though we knew him as a screenwriter,
because he found success in Ohio, and thinking back,
in reality, we were journeying toward the same adolescent
dream, green stars, and we pursued when we were heartbroken,
worn-out, reckless, and last I saw Andrew he stuffed quarters
into the jukebox at gold-lit Birds, repeating Sussudio, commenting
on every woman at the bar, and I didn’t speak up. And Jesse had
returned that day from Thailand. He was sad and I was in love.
I had a chance to see him again– last fall, New York– but he has
a kid now and I could not muster a bus, or to revisit reminiscing
the dreams we shared, what we had to wake up from
during our long, separate searches for meaning.

James Croal Jackson is a Filipino-American poet who works in film production. His latest chapbooks are A God You Believed In (Pinhole Poetry, 2023) and Count Seeds With Me (Ethel Zine & Micro-Press, 2022). Recent poems are in Ghost City Review, Little Patuxent Review, and Lamplit Underground. He edits The Mantle Poetry from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

You can find more of James’ work here on Ink Pantry.