Yellow Mama E zine

New Year’s Eve, 2022

 

by James Croal Jackson

 

I sit on a pewter couch

you call indestructible

in the sea of scratches.

 

A permeating scent of sweat—

my life feels tenuous this New

Year’s Eve. I am in my mid-

 

thirties, concocting a way

to drink my night away. You say

we need to cut our consumption

 

after your shower, in the midst

of an aftermath, any consequence

which demands a full tomorrow.

 

In the steam of solid I pour into glass

you almost break. Shards we neatly drink.

 

 

 

     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)

​

     Image Credit: Margarita glasses in a Mexican restaurant using dramatic cool and broken glass filters. Photography and photo art by John C. Mannone.

​

     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