Please Don't Come Home

By James Croal Jackson

​we need not gather
rice in the trash sticky
with friends’ hands
still friends their hands
a question of what we collect
these rakes our long limbs

---

I have been drowning in work

By James Croal Jackson

​but the sun still floats past 8 PM
& I wonder where time went
sunk in the blue glow
of overheating machines
 
it is Monday
and everyone hates Mondays
because this past weekend
I went to a house concert
in the state I once lived in
 
only to return to the wheel
and drive a few marathons
windows open music loud
past spontaneous roadkill
and honeybee fields
 
last night I slept on a pile
of unsigned documents
dreamt of paper cuts
and Parochial school
 
I bought green bananas
for the office
and by the end
of the day
they were brown

---

No One Out-Pizzas the Heart

By James Croal Jackson

​Lazy Sunday order two
large stuffed crusts to last
a few days to save
but not myself—tubes
of cheese curl tight
inside my arteries. I know
I should stop not the heart-
beating but the eating
this way, this hoarding
of grease boxes stacking
in my trash can
body.

---

James Croal Jackson is a Filipino-American poet working in film production. His latest chapbook is A God You Believed In (Pinhole Poetry, 2023). Recent poems are in ITERANT, Stirring, and The Indianapolis Review. He edits The Mantle Poetry from Nashville, Tennessee. (jamescroaljackson.com)