James Croal Jackson: Meanwhile, in Real Life

James Croal Jackson: Meanwhile, in Real Life
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HOROSCOPE – MAY 12, 2017

 

You generally enjoy your dreams, Taurus,

but not this last one in which your lover

invites her Iowan ex to your house

 

and they wear your jeans while

you yell at cabinets of lipstick. There

are layers of red on each wall’s face

 

and you run outside after her

Honda yelling at its exhaust

along cornfields of mid-America.

 

Meanwhile, in real life, you

two have yet to get in a fight.

 

Maybe you should do that soon.


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James Croal Jackson is the author of The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights Press, 2017). His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in FLAPPERHOUSE, Rust + Moth, The Bitter Oleander, and elsewhere. He edits The Mantle and is a former winner of the William Redding Memorial Poetry Contest. Find him in Columbus, Ohio or at jimjakk.com.