JAMES CROAL JACKSON

Mono No Aware

The movie starts at 6:50 tomorrow. Maybe
you’d rather go to the summer festival
at Spirit, where we can drink cold beers
and browse the vendors’ wares, or listen
to a local band play songs we don’t know
but we’ll hum along unless we want to get
away, or eat vanilla ice cream that melts
on our tongues like snowflakes in September.
Maybe we can just sit on a bench and talk
about anything and everything, like usual,
like the context clues of colors in art
and there exists a planet so hot it rains iron!
And there exists a Japanese idiom that means
the awareness of the impermanence of things. 

The Mass Marketing Email Says We Will Miss You After I Smash That Unsubscribe Link

Bye-bye blue beaches underneath a copywriter’s fingertips!
I am feeling filthy enough typing my own contributions

to the downfall of everything. The keyboard sounds
juicy if you just listen. Zesty. Squishing lemons.

Releasing shift’s a loud clicker. A double jump
for a healthier life, somersaulting upwards,

get jacked! I wish there were a supplement
to supplant my depression. They will

keep trying. I am alive enough
to receive burnt-out transmissions.

James Croal Jackson is a Filipino-American poet 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 The Garlic Press, Remington Review, and ONE ART. He edits The Mantle Poetry from Nashville, Tennessee. (jamescroaljackson.com)