You got married Saturday

By James Croal Jackson

and I should have been sad
but look my car has passed

you I drive ninety-five west
on I-80 in a who-cares lane

 

though now I am becoming
anxious in this fantasy as a

 

rebel driver I realize I
thrust the gas pedal at any

 

one who laughs with me and
sticks with me and touches

 

my hand and chest my heart
a thing that thrusts the pedal

 

until jammed accelerating
I never look out the window

to see landscapes blur
all the fields the same

 

Travels

 

Tell me your wildest
vacation fantasy. There
we will visit our home.

 

I dream of caves–
stalagmite fingerprints.
The drop, the black bat,

 

meat. There
we’ll forget light
and its animals.

 

James Croal Jackson has a chapbook, The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights Press, 2017), and poems in Pacifica, Reservoir, and indefinite space. He edits The Mantle (themantlepoetry.com). Currently, he works in the film industry in Pittsburgh, PA.