'Grand Canyon' & 'Chiaroscuro': Two Poems by James Croal Jackson

GRAND CANYON

a blank in earthsong stone

quartz a scream into the void

a thousand tourists hear

to mean joyride when

I mean missing I want

to be a thousand people

at once over the course

of the day it happens a

spectrum of tongue and

skins to slip on to belong

as a cog in the clunky

function of the world

---

CHIAROSCURO

Alone we stand

at Mt. Washington’s overlook,

the incline trembling. How

many nights did we seek

the city lights from Mulholland

Drive?

I replied,

Stanley Kubrick once

filmed with only candles.

You obscure the view,

flick Bergman on your phone

and ask, do you see the reaper?

His head an egg floating

atop a sea of darkness.

---

James Croal Jackson (he/him) 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. (jimjakk.com)