Have you felt the season’s new bite?

Body shivering unable to process it

yet. I don’t want to leave the house,

the purr from fur an engine revving

nowhere. I won a blue ribbon once,  

too, my mom won’t stop bragging

about. College: outstanding student 

filmmaker, documentarian 

recording red-eyed the mist

of dawn relishing any chill. Went 

to L.A. for industry but witnessed 

the bloom of everyone else, jealous 

sensitivity of light in these lens, so hid 

inside poetry. Every day was recycled 

aluminum that sought any warm body 

to hold then drink away. I am 

comfortable here. Still, I doze in 

shadowed corners of a home, 

unresponsive when you call my name.

 

James Croal Jackson (he/him/his) is a Filipino-American poet. He has a chapbook, The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights Press, 2017), and recent poems in Sampsonia Way, San Antonio Review, and Pacifica. He edits The Mantle Poetry (themantlepoetry.com) and works in film production in Pittsburgh, PA. (jamescroaljackson.com)