With flimsy glasses bought in bulk online, we office workers stand at the balcony. I ask who you got money on? The sun or the moon? But I am sleepy, meaning the moon already won. My sweet drink ninety- seven percent chocolate, three percent banana, not a totality of any kind, but the birds are helicopters zigzagging confusedly. We gaze high, expecting grandeur – the shock of a day draped, a story – this partial blockage a slight darkening of day in spring weather, a bonding for us unbound from inside the bricks’ long hours, how really not special it is to be partial to what resembles love. You walk blue stairs to stand beside me and I don’t notice in my plastic blackness of glasses until the sky returns to its afternoon light, birds singing their usual beautiful songs we rarely listen to, and once again we say nothing.
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