Complicity & Two Other Poems
James Croal Jackson (he/him) is a Filipino-American poet. He has two chapbooks, Our Past Leaves (Kelsay Books, forthcoming 2021) and The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights Press, 2017), with recent poems in White Wall Review, Subnivean, and Hello America. He edits The Mantle Poetry (themantlepoetry.com) from Pittsburgh, PA. (jamescroaljackson.com)
By James Croal Jackson
I don’t know how to help.
I have been in my house,
mouth shut, for months
and months and
when I speak, it is the wrong
thing, so I apologize
for everything. Mostly I am sorry
I didn’t burn the station
first.
Defund the Police
was foolish to say we’re not at war
the migraine in my brain the same
as entering Iraq in high school
the virus lives and dies in us
the pandemic is not the protest
the protest is in living past
the stranger who pours milk
on your face to clear the tear
gas on streets people die on
Protest Beginning in Friendship Park (Pittsburgh, June 5, 2020)
It is not enough
to not be
racist. Heresy
to remove
your mask
and cough.
White men
move
their mask
and cough
into a crowd.
We are still
supposed to be
distant. Now
I can’t clean myself
enough off. Blood
on my hands
after hundreds
of years. Yet
we chant the system
has gone on
too long. We look
into a chaos
of fog & tear
gas smoke.
I am lucky
to live
this long.
We must peel
all the saturated
paint off America’s
crumbling walls
and build a new
house.