Yellow Mama E zine

Muse

 

by James Croal Jackson

 

you cancel plans

it’s a rain check again

 

but I understand

I always understand

 

even to the detriment

of clouds which

 

hold a bounty of ink

today just waiting

 

for a burst of

inspiration

 

 

 

     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 The River, Mangrove Review, and Packingtown Review. He edits The Mantle Poetry from Nashville, Tennessee. (jamescroaljackson.com)

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Image Credit: Magenta, pink, and purple cumulus clouds over the Tennessee River in Knoxville, Tennessee (9/10/2017) are full of low angle scattered light and moisture from a category 4 hurricane (Irma) making a Florida landfall that morning. These clouds will burst on the morrow with rain, with prayers, and with ideas for poems. Photography by John C. Mannone

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John C. Mannone is a scientist, poet, CNF essayist, fiction writer, and poetry editor who creates derivative visual art and photo art for speculative poems in Abyss & Apex, Silver Blade (on hiatus), and ADR Poetry (defunct). His photography/art appears or is forthcoming on the anthology cover of the  2026 Tennessee Voices and inside Chattanooga Writers Guild anthologies. He currently serves on the artists staff of Yellow Mama Literary Magazine. His literary work appears widely in Artemis, Critical Humanities, The New England Journal of Medicine, and others. He’s the Poet Laureate for the City of Oak Ridge, TN (2026-2028).

 

https://jcmannone.wordpress.com/published-collections/

https://www.facebook.com/jcmannone

 

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