Full
Moon & Shooting Stars
It
is the Perseid meteor shower
and
everything is happening
at
once. I park my car
to
go to the bonfire
at
the perpetually-renovating
home
(no floor can ever
be
called finished)
and
work defies my
freedom
once again
on
Friday night
after
another twelve-
hour
marathon
but
my friends sit
in
darkness and
I
can’t see them,
I just
walk into
the
house soundlessly
and
type away
my
mistakes,
thinking
of the full
red
moon that disappeared
into
traffic on Penn
Avenue.
And I look
for
it from this house but it is
obscured
by trees, or altitude,
or
the general camaraderie
of
things, the order of how
it’s
supposed to be, and when
I
step outside I ask
who’s
here?
One
by one
it
is who
I
want to see.
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 Beltway
Poetry Quarterly, Little Patuxent Review, and The Round. He edits The
Mantle Poetry from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (jamescroaljackson.com)